Target Reached. Bird No. 200 seen on 1st August.

The end of July and I am on 198 birds just two short of the target.  Its time for a big effort to get two more birds.

So on 1st August Alex and I set out on a 'Big Trip'
My aim was to get two new birds to take me to the 200.
For Alex, who already had 200 birds, the aim was to crack a bogie bird - a Mediterranean Gull that we had both failed to see so for this year. At various time throughout the year it had been seen at several places round our local coastline.  The latest occasion was just the week before at Cairnbulg.  He also wanted some Red Kite photos and of course anything else that was around.

What was around was a Rose-coloured Starling way up north at Embo, but just about in range for a day trip.  

We set off bright and early.  Our first stop was Lossiemouth.  The target here was a Mediterranean Gull that had been around for a few days.  Apparently it hung around with other gulls in a regular morning and evening roost.  Well it wasn't there in the morning.  We stayed until it was clear that the dog walkers, (the dog actually, but the blame if there is any lies with the walkers who let their dogs run around chasing gulls) were going to make it impossible to find one gull among the constantly disturbed flock. 

I took this photo in January but its not changed since then

Lossiemouth

So onwards and upwards.  

We proceeded to Embo, crossing the Kessock Bridge and heading north to the other side of Dornoch.  Now I had spoken to Ian at McIntosh the butchers in Fraserburgh about going to Embo.  He just said 'Ah Grannie's Heilan Hame'  and the conversation didn't go any further.  Did he mean that his grandmother had a second home there?  I didn't know.  We talked about it on the drive.  Alex suggested that it was a tourist shop selling tartan this and that.  I thought it might be an old croft turned into a museum.

It turned out to be a caravan park

Grannie's Heilan Hame

 Quite a good one by the look of it, swimming pool, crazy golf, play park, entertainment centre and so on. 
But we were not there for all this fun the serious stuff was finding the Rose-Coloured Starling.  As we drove into the village I saw a man with a camera and long lens walking up the road.  I stopped and asked it he had seen the Rose-coloured Starling.  'Yes', he said 'its just over there' pointing to the side of the road where I had stopped the car.  And sure enough it was - tick 199 for me.

Rose-coloured Starling

 This is a bird I have wanted to see for a long time.  I was reminded a few days ago that when I was a young boy looking through bird books this was one of the birds I thought had a wow factor.  But this was a bit of a disappointment.  For a start there was no challenge to find the bird.  There it was, pointed out to us and in the open.  No real birding skills were required to see it and photograph it.  It was not in a wild sort of place but next to houses and neatly kept gardens.

Rose-coloured Starling

 
Worst of all, it was all hunched up and not looking at all well.  It was not the confident, inquisitive, aggressive bird that is constantly on the move that I was expecting.  Perhaps it was feeling lonely, they normally spend their summer in the Balkans, some 2000 miles away in tight breeding colonies. They spend their winter in large flocks in India and tropical Asia over 4000 miles away.  It certainly would have been feeling the cold and no doubt finding it difficult to find its favourite food - Locusts. Why this one decided to spend its summer in Scotland at a holiday caravan park we will never know.

We had lunch, over looking Grannie's Heilan Hame, it was the closest we could get to a view of the sea, and went on our way.  As we went past the spot where we had seen the bird it was not there.  Someone was using the nearby bench to tie their shoelace so presumable had scared the bird away so it must have been more active than we thought.

Our next stop on this trip was to Tollie, an RSPB site where Red Kites are given some supplementary food at 14.30 every day.  There were four Kites at the feeding station, and countless numbers of Herring Gulls. 

Magda Stocking Up The Red Kite Bird Table

Chunks of meat are put onto a large bird table, by RSPB volunteers.  The kites don't stop.  They swooping and pick up a piece of meat eating it on the wing.  The Gulls come in and land on the table to get their share of the food.  One of Magda's tasks was to keep the Gulls away but let the Kites feed.

Red Kite and Herring Gulls at the Bird Table

 
 

Red Kite Feeding on the Wing

Before and after the feeding session the Kites perched in their favourite tree

Red Kite

Red Kite

Red Kite

Just before we left Tollie Magda told us about a Loch that had a Slavonian Grebe with chicks that was nearby.  When we got there the weather was so bad that we couldn't leave the car let alone look for a Grebe.  Somewhere to come back to?

We broke the long journey home with another stop at Lossiemouth to see if the Mediterranean Gull was around.  This time there were even more Gulls than in the morning.   Another birder told us he had seen the bird and it had the habit of sitting on the opposite grass bank further up the estuary.  It was a bit of a trek, scanning all the Gulls as we went. Not too far up stream as it turned out one of our 'stops and scan' sessions revealed the Mediterranean Gull.  The end of a long quest was over and it was bird 200 for me. I had reached my target.  Getting a good photo of the bird was not possible.  Here is the best I could do.

Mediterranean Gull

The Gull was visible though a telescope.  Looking through the camera view finder I could not see it.  The grassy area was somewhat featureless so it was a question of pointing the camera in the right direction and hoping that you got it in the frame.  The Med Gull is the one standing up. It has a black eyebrow and a carrot coloured bill and no black on the wing tips - a adult bird going into winter plumage.

If you had asked me when I set off which of the target birds I would want to e number 200 I would have said the Rose-coloured Starling a bird I have always wanted to see and thought was out of reach.  Now, given the slight disappointment of the sighting I think it is more fitting that it was the Mediterranean Gull.  I have looked through many a flock of Gulls for this bird all round the Buchan coastline.  It felt that, like the Cappercallie, it would be a bird that I would not see this year.  

So what now?  I have reached my target of 200 birds and there is still five months of the year to go.  I will not as some have suggested raise my target.  However, neither will I stop bird watching.  But I will do so in a much less frenetic way, I will be more relaxed about it.  I certainly won't be going on 300 mile trips to see a bird that has been unfortunate to be off course (unless its a really good one!).  There are a few birds that are not on my list that for various reasons should be.  The Cappercaillie as an iconic bird of the Scottish Highland should be on every ones list and on mine.  Whinchat and Redstart have so far eluded me as have Shearwaters.  Woodcock is a bird that every birder I know has seen but I have never seen one, to me it is a myth.  
Over the next few weeks the wader passage will get underway with lots of wading birds leaving their breeding grounds bound for Africa and using the UK as a fuel stop.  Later on the smaller warblers and other passerines will be making their journey to Southern Europe and Africa, with some stopping here briefly on their way.  With these large scale movements there is always the chance that the odd rare bird not on my year list will turn up.  If its not too far away I will go and see if I can find it.  In the meantime I will enjoy the daily coming and going of common and garden birds trying to take decent photos of them.  So I will carryon with this blog to let people know how I am getting on and to share the photos.

Total on list 200 

 

14th Feb. Coots and Kites

On 14th I went to Edinburgh for two nights to meet the newest grandchild, Casper, and the other five grandchildren.  There was a bit of a family gathering.

I was up bright and early and aimed to get to Balgavies Loch at about 8.00.  I was a bit late because the AA route instructions at one point read 'slight left'.  What it meant was turn left and its not a 90 degree turn but about 45 degrees.  Anyway I went straight on and got the the Loch via Forfar.  The Loch is a nature reserve run by Scottish Wildlife Trust.  There is an island in the loch and in the summer a pair of Ospreys nest in the pine.  On my visit the island was occupied by Cormorants and a Carrion Crow.

One of the target birds for this trip was a Coot.  Believe it or not I had gone the first six weeks of 2017 without seeing one.  There were about fifty here along with other common water birds like Mallard, Goldeneye and Greylag Geese.

Coot

Coots

There is a path that circumnavigates the Loch.  Part of it is an old railway line. It still has some of the old railway buildings

There is also a bird hide overlooking the Osprey island.  It has some feeders front of the hide and some seed and fat balls in the hide.  I was the only one around at that time so I filled the feeders best I could.  I don't know whether I was supposed to or not.  When I visit again I must remember to take some bird food to leave.  There was the usual array if Tits, Finches, a couple of Robins, Dunnocks and Blackbirds and a small pack of Brown Rats hovering up the food on the ground.

Long-tailed Tit

Brown Rats

Last time I pointed out Brown Rats to someone at a nature reserve they got all upset and said that they would have to do something about it.  I hope no one from SWT reads this and decides to eradicate the Rats.

I had another visit planned before going on the Edinburgh, Argaty Red Kite Centre.  I arrived about an hour before the guide takes visitors up to the hide and the food is laid out for the Kites at 1.30.     Just enough time to consume my packed lunch and look around the centre. I hadn't expected to see any of the birds until 1.30 and was surprised to see half a dozen or so circling  round the centre when I entered the car park.  They were keeping their distance.  There are four in this shot.

 At 1.00 I got my first message about a Little Egret back home at the Loch of Strathbeg, it was from Alex.  I picked up the second message, from John just before 4.00.  Nothing I could do but hope that it stayed around until I returned home.

One of the good things about these organised events is that you meet the other people having the same experience.  The couple from Derbyshire with there three children were up visiting friends.  The enthusiasm (and knowledge) of all the family about all things to do with wildlife was amazing.  The guide had to up his game when explaining the work of the centre to them.

The Kits were amazing as well.  I was not expecting there to be so many.  Certainly more than forty circling and swooping down for the food.  So many is was difficult to get a clear photo.  The crows got in the way as well.

It was also difficult getting a decent shot of a bird without wing tags.

I know that it is important to monitor these rare birds and that the wing tags enables the researcher to get a lot of very useful information but from the point of view of a photographer they are ugly and can ruin a good photo.

But I did get some in the end.

Now it has taken me some time to look through all the images of Red Kites that I took.  There were times when I put my camera on burst mode and took pictures at six a second.  The guy next to me had his camera on burst mode all the time and was shooting 14 every second.  I don't think I want his job of sorting through them and deciding which to keep and which to delete.

To sum up a great days birding - and the star of the show?  Coot or Red Kite?  Both added to the year list.  No it was meeting Casper of course.

Total on list 119

Fog

Not a lot of birding today - Fogbound.  In any case I had domestic chores to do and I had to catch up with sorting (deleting) and filing all the photos I have been taking. I have up loaded the Cherry Cottage Big Garden Birdwatch results.
From 9:30 to 10:30 on Saturday the birds were recorded following the RSPB instructions.

Starling

Coal Tit

Chaffinch

Goldfinch

Tree Sparrow

Of course I had my camera by my side as well as a notebook and pen and a cup of tea.  The birds recorded were:-
Goldfinch                       7
Starling                        33
Chaffinch                     13
Tree Sparrow               11
House Sparrow           16
Blackbird                       8
Blue Tit                          2
Great Tit                        2
Robin                             1
Dunnock                        2
Woodpigeon                  1

Carrion Crow                 2

Collared Dove               2

Coal Tit                         2
Jackdaw                       1
(The numbers are the highest number of each bird seen at one time)


I have also been looking at further trips.  In the middle of February I am going to Edinburgh to spend a day with daughters and grandchildren.  I want to be able to see thing on the journey that would be difficult or impossible to see here in the NE of Scotland.

One bird that I want to plan in the trip is a Red Kite.  Although there has been a Red Kite release scheme to the west of Aberdeen numbers are still small and there is no designated  viewing isn't like the ones in Dumfriesshire, Perthshire and the Highlands.  A couple of years ago I did see one on one of my morning walks but I can't rely on that that happening again to get the tick.

Another bird, one that doesn't live in Aberdeenshire at all, is a Nuthatch.  Their range has been extending northward for several years and they have now reached Edinburgh.  The Firth of Forth is a a good place to find wintering Grebes so if time permits they might be the subject of a search.  The Firth of Firth is a big area and I would have to be quite sure that I would find one or two.

One place I have heard a lot about and from where I have seen lots of bird  photos is  Balgavies Loch in Angus.  It may not provide any ticks but if I have time I would like to visit.  There might even be a Coot there.