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 

 

I was asked why I hadn't done a blog recently

Someone asked me the other day why I had not done a blog for a few weeks.  I have to confess to being a bit flattered.  I didn't know my #My200BirdingYear would be missed.  
All the excuses I that sprang to mind seemed a little weak.  I had a cold at the beginning of July (no that was probably in June).  My sister and her partner visited ( not a good reason as we did some bird watching.  Jill's Buchan Birds and Beasts Studio was open to the public last week end and I was doing lots of work to help her prepare (not good enough - that week I saw a Green Sandpiper that was a new tick for the year list)
I think the real reason was that I had spent a lot of time going to places and not seeing the target bird (Green Sandpiper being the exception) so a blog would have been 'went there, didn't see a lot, came home' and quite boring.
So when I didn't have a cold at in the middle of the month I was going on my morning walks and seeing the usual sort of birds and wildlife 

Spotted Flycatcher

Fox

Female Bullfinch

Juv. Dunnock

When my sister visited we went to the Ythan and the Bullers of Buchan

Common Seal

Curlews

Juv. Kittiwake

Arctic Tern

Sandwich Tern

During the month everyone seems to have been seeing Manx Sheerwaters off the coast so I have spent the odd half hour at Kinnaird Head looking out to sea through my telescope and not seeing any at all.  
The other bird I did not see in July was a Mediterranean Gull.  Word came out the Margaret had seen it at Cairnbulg Harbour.  I go there nearly every day when I go to get the daily paper and hadn't seen one.  I was making special trips to the harbour to find it on 'my patch'.  On one occasion it was to meet Margaret who had just seen it.  No luck no Gull.  Later it came through the internet that it had been seen just a couple of miles  (if that) down the coast at Inverallochy Golf Course.  I had a few more goes at finding the bird in both locations without success.  I gave up when a report came through that it had been sen at the Loch of Strathbeg Lagoon on the 27th.  No one has seen it since.  On one of the days I did get a good Arctic Skua photo

Arctic Skua

The other birding thing to report is that I found a few colour ringed birds at Cairnbulg.  One was a Sanderling - third bird from the left in this photo.

Sanderling

 I have reported the sighting and been told that it the white one with a little flag could be an American ring.  I haven't had any feedback yet.

I found two Black-headed Gulls with rings.  One was a juvenile the other an adult, with a long lens and a heavy crop it is possible to read the lettering on the ring. 

Ring on an Adult Black-headed Gull

I have had feedback:-
'This bird was ringed by Grampian RG as age at least 2 years, sex unknown on 17-Jul-2014 23:00:00 at Ythan Estuary, Newburgh, Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, UK'

The one success has been the Green Sandpiper.  On 23rd (the same day I took the Arctic Skua photo) I got a message from Jimmy that there had been a 'possible' sighting of one at the Loch of Strathbeg.  When I got there the visitors centre was shut, I had to peep through the artistic screen to see what was on and around the Starnafin Pool.  Here is an image of the screen I took a long time ago.

Trying to find one of those cut-outs at the right height for a telescope is not easy.

Not long after I arrived Alex turned up.  He had got the same message from Jimmy.  It was staring to get gloomy.  A midst was coming down and we were not finding the Green Sandpiper.  From the scene there was one patch of ground that we could not see.  It would have been foolish if we had left and not tried to find a view point that covered that bit.  We did find such a place by skirting round the barn and trampling through the undergrowth to a fence that provided the vantage point we were looking for.  But the Green Sandpiper was not to be seen.  Visibility continued to deteriorate.  We were just on the point of calling it a 'lost cause' when Alex saw the bird fly into the very patch of ground we had moved to cover.  It was not there long enough for either of us to get a photograph.  It flew further away to one of the islands in the wet ground beyond Starnafin Pool.  That flight was enough to confirm that it was indeed the Green Sandpiper, its white rump and two tone body clearly visible.   Again it did not stop there long but flew even further away.  There it settled down and there we were able to get a photo albeit leaving a lot to be desired.

Green Sandpiper

 Alex and I were able to leave Starnafin with a bit of a smile on our faces.

As is the way of these things the following day several people went to Strathbeg to see the Green Sandpiper but were not successful.  And as id the way of such things over the next few days I saw the bird on three different days during my early morning walk round Lonmay.

Total on list 198




 

Three Days Birding

On Sunday I was up at 4.00am to find some early morning birds on Deeside.  First stop the Boat Inn in Aboyne.  This is where Garden Warblers hang out.  On Sunday they were having a lie in.  There was not sight nor sound of them.

Second stop was the Oak Wood at Dinnet.  I was here the Sunday before with Trevor and Alex.  But t was in the afternoon so we didn't expect to find a great deal.  Early in the morning there should have been Redstarts. There wasn't, there were lots of Blue and Great Tits, Chaffinches, the odd Great Spotted Woodpecker, a few Roe Deer and lots and lots of Wrens.

Dinnet Oak Wood

 From the car park to the wood you cross the river Dee.  Here is the view from the bridge

Down Stream

Up Stream

The final stop was the Forest of Birse.  I had a short trip here with Alex a few weeks ago but to be honest I didn't really know where to look.  There should be Whinchat and the smallest chance of a Merlin.  I walked a mile o so up the valley and into the grouse moors.  No Whinchat, no Merlin but there were lots of Meadow Pipits.

Meadow Pipit perched on Heather

 Common Gulls were plentiful as were the Rabbits

Rabbit in the Heather

There were Oystercatchers and Lapwing and views

Shooting Lodge

Old Kirk

All this heather and a big shooting lodge and I didn't see or hear a Grouse!

So Sunday was a 200 mile or so trip and not one bird added to the list.  If all the targets had been there I would have been on 199. But I did get some photos.

Monday I got an email responding to my request for information about Barn Owls.  So at 20:30 I set off for the Loch of Strathbeg.  I got settled into a hide and waited.  There was a Whooper Swan just in front of the hide.  It should not have been there it should have been in Iceland.  I waited some more.  The sun was setting so there were more views.

In the deepening gloom the Common Terns were still going back and forth between the sea and the colonial nest site at Starnafin collecting sand eels for their young.  The Mallard duckings were refusing to go to bed.

Add caption

Then, as the mist was rising at about 22:00 the first Barn Owl came into view.  It was and remained on the far side of the Loch.  Quartering slowly over the fields and reed beds occasionally it would go head first into the vegetation.  Then after one such dive it made a beeline for an old boat house to meet another owl.  Then both of them started hunting.  Capturing all this on camera was nigh on impossible it was so dark and they were so far away. This is what the camera with a 400mm lens captured

I resorted to digiscoping by hand.  To get any image at all the shutter speed had to be slow so wings are a blur.   Even so the lack of light pushed the ISO to maximum creating a lot of noise.  Here are the best! of the ones I took and they are cropped as well.

 

If you look carefully at the last one you will see one owl flying and two on the roof.  I didn't see this until I had the images on the computer.


 10 mile round trip max. and one tick.

Today (Tuesday) Tim posted on social media that he had heard a Quail at Longside in the morning.  Alex messaged me to say it was still there at noon.  As I had to go that way, sort of, to get some garden bird food some time this week I thought why not go now.  So I did.  A Quail is a bird that is heard but seldom seen.  I took a video of the field in order to record the sound. So put the speakers on and listen to the strange whip like call of a Quail.  You will also hear Tim as he drove up the road to stop and have a chat.

I have never seen a Quail.  I have heard them on several occasions.  They fly in from Africa for the summer and hide in the grass, or in this case a barley field.  The only way you know they are there is by hearing its call.

20 mile round trip that I was going to do anyway and one tick

Why do I go on these long journeys?

Total on list 197

Good News and Bad News

First the bad news.

Last night I did an audit of the bird species I have seen this year.   In my last post I stated that the total for the year was 195.  It is in fact 194.  The list of birds seen on the right hand side is correct it is just my adding up that has gone wrong.  I don't know when the mistake happened and I am not going to trawl through over seventy blog posts to try to find out.  I suppose the plus side is that I have done the counting now and not after I thought I had reached 200, celebrated and then found I was one short.

Now the good news.  The total is up to 195 again.

This evening just as I was about to sit down to some well earned tea I got a message to say that a Red-necked Phalarope was to be seen at the Loch of Strathbeg visitors centre.  Tea was put on hold.  Jill said she would wait till I got back.  (Luckily it was not a cooked meal that would spoil.).  I went as fast as I could, keeping to speed and safe driving limits to Strathbeg.  It is only ten minutes drive away, if that so there was every chance that I would see the bird.

Rushing into the visitors centre, that the RSPB staff had kept open for people to come and see this rarity I was greeted by 'Do you want the bad news?'  The Red-necked Phalarope had only just flown away.  zigzagging apparently towards the main Loch and gaining height.  Birds like this that are 'gaining height' as they fly away tend not to come back.  It seemed that this bird had only stopped at Strathbeg foe a 10 to 15 minute breather before continuing its journey.

After breeding these birds winter in the Pacific Ocean of the coast of Peru some 8,000 miles away.  I wasn't likely to follow it there.  Lesser mortals would have been despondent and gone home for tea.  I didn't.  I decided to stay for a little while to see if it did come back and to see what else was about.

The island in front of the VC was full of Common Terns and their chicks.  There was a constant too-ing and fro-ing of adult birds bringing in sand eels.  There were some good looking Ruff, Shelducks with their young and so on. Nothing to get too excited about. And all the time the RSPB staff and I were scanning around to try to relocate the Phalarope. 

Tufted Duck and Ducklings

Suddenly a shout went up. James had found the bird   No one had seen it return to the same stretch of water it was last seen in.  But sure enough there it was, the first Red-necked Phalarope I had ever seen.

Red-necked Phalarope

No one else seemed to have reacted to the rare bird message that had gone out.  Apart from the RSPB staff I was the only one there.  We watched it for some time.  Occasionally it did the sort of thing that Phalaropes do - pecking at the surface of the water - twirling round in a tight circle like a ballerina doing a pirouette.

Then Brian arrived just as the bird took to the air once more.  This time it did not go very far and Brian got to see it as well.

We stayed and watched it for some time.  It never left the water at one point it skirted along the edge

The one thing that struck was how small it was, bigger than a Chaffinch but smaller than a Blackbird.  On TV the bits I remember are close ups where you don't get an impression of size.  Above you can see it is dwarfed by the common tern.

Here are a couple of flight shots again showing how small the bird is.

So there you have it.  Number 195 a bird that breeds in the high arctic (a few do breed in Shetland and the Outer Hebridies) and winters in the Pacific Ocean.  I didn't think I would ever seen one.  To me it was one of those mystical birds you only see in nature programs on TV.  But there it was just three miles from where I live.

Total on list 195

What's Off Shore at Murcar Golf Course

The Scottish Golf Union cites Murcar Golf Course as "one of the most celebrated courses in Scotland".  It has hosted various Scottish and European events.  It lies to the North of Aberdeen and is a links course in sand dunes overlooking the North Sea.

I went there today not to play or even watch golf.  I went to look at the sea or rather to look at the birds on the sea.   This meant walking across the golf course to get to the top of the dunes.  It meant dicing with the risk of serious injury as golf ball fly around.  I found it very difficult trying to work out which direction they would come from.  Fortunately golfers are, unlike participants in other sports polite and courteous so on several occasions I was warned that there may be a ball whizzing towards me.

Having got across the course I then had to tackle the dunes.  There is a sort of path at the top of the dunes on the landward side there is a steep slope down to the golf course.  On the seaward side a vertical drop to the beach.  Every so often the path goes down into a ravine and up the other side.  Not easy when you are carrying a camera, binoculars and a telescope with tripod.

I went through all these hardships to find Scoters.  These are sea ducks that come to this part of the coast at this time of year to moult.  The most common is of course the Common Scoter.  There are thousands of them and they were a long way off shore.

A Raft of Common Scoters

This made my task of trying to find the handful of Velvet Scoters, the one or two Surf Scoters and the one White Winged Scoter somewhat difficult.  A task made even more problematical when after you had searched through half of the they all decided to take flight and land further up or down the coast.

Scoters on the move

I did manage to locate two Velvet Scoters.

There was another bonus.  I also found the King Eider.  Known locally as Elvis, 'The King' get it?  He has been visiting the area for quite a few years.  He hangs about with Eiders and in the past has usually been found on the Ythan estuary a few miles up the coast.  For the last week or so he has been seen on this stretch of the coast.

Four Eiders and at the rear One King Eider

There are several hundred Eiders here as well as the Scoters.  I was lucky because Elvis was closer in shore.  Here is the same raft of Scoters three photos above but with the Eiders a bit more spread out in the foreground.

Scoters in the distance and Eiders in the Foreground.

A bit closer still was another bonus.  A Red -Throated Diver

Red Throated Diver

More than likely if I had stayed longer I would have found the elusive Surf and White Winged Scoters but time did not allow for that and I had to run the gauntlet of the golf course to get back to the car and home for lunch.  Next time I think I will take a hard hat just in case.

Total on list 195

Dee Valley. Balleter to Cambus of May and Dinnet

Sunday was an RSPB members nature ramble.  Organised by the NE Scotland Members group, we started at 10.00am on the South Deeside Road at Ballater.  The walk was led by Rob Leslie.  Ten of us set off and I'm sure to the relief of Rob ten of us finished the walk with Lunch at the Cambus o' May footbridge.

Eight of the Ten

 
It was raining when we got out of the cars.  Someone said that if it is raining at 10 0' clock it will rain for the rest of the day.  Fortunately this weather forecasting tale was not 100% fool proof.  The rain soon stopped and did not return.

At the first stop just a few hundred yards along the road we got a good view of the river and were able to see a few of the specialist riverine birds.

Grey Wagtail

Common Sandpiper

There was also Swifts, Sand Martins, Swallows , House Martins and a Dipper.

As we carried on a Buzzard flew overhead taking some newly found road kill home.

Buzzard

Not long after we left the road and followed the path through woodland and by some paddocks.  Here we found Willow Warbler, Coal Tit, Blackcap, Treecreeper, Tree Pipit, Goldcrest and other woodland species.  Many of the birds were newly fledged young.  Others seemed to be tending nests nearby.  The breeding season was in full swing.

Young Tree Pipit

For most of the walk there was one  moth/butterfly that was abundant but only identified after we all got back home.  It as a Chimney Sweeper Moth.  It was only a couple of centimetres across but its dark colouring and constant fluttering flight made it stand out against the green of the grasses and bracken.

Chimney Sweeper Moth

The other non-bird nature thing that was abundant was the Wood Ant nests.

Wood Ant Nest

They came in all sizes from smaller than a mole hill to the one above that was over two feet high.  Each one was a hive of activity (if that is an expression you can use for ants). Even so the big ones must have taken years to construct. 

A video taken on my mobile phone

We ended the walk at the Cambus o' May suspension bridge.  A peaceful spot for lunch apart from the family on the other side having a great time in the water.  It must have been very cold!

Alex and Trevor at the Cambus o' May Bridge

The official RSPB members walk finished here but I went with Alex and Trevor to the oak woods at Dinnet.  The aim was to find a Redstart and a Green Woodpecker.  We didn't see either of them although we reckon we heard young woodpeckers.  This little excursion became an insect hunt.  Of course there were the inevitable Chimney Sweeper Moths but we also found butterflies -  Speckled Wood, Small Pearl Bordered Fritillaries and Red Admirals and a Four Spotted Chaser dragonfly

Speckled Wood

Small Pearl Bordered Fritillary

This is my photo of the butterfly.  For some reason I managed to pick what was probably the most tattered one around.  The next photo was taken by Alex and is so much better than mine in so many ways.

Small Pearl Bordered Fritillary by Alex Jamison

Four Spotted Chaser

Total on list 192