Christine's walking & birds blog

Unable to have a walk at Ardmair (where all I could see was a distant, storm-tossed great northern diver), I drove back to the harbour and sat in my car watching the gulls. An Iceland gull landed quite close so I got out and took a picture in pouring rain.


I'm fed up with car birding - I want a good long walk. Once upon a time, I never minded bad weather because if it was too bad for optics and birding, I just went out for a run. Now that a cranky knee has put a stop to that activity, I cannot help recalling a day when I was out walking and birding down south and was joined for a while by a male birder. A jogger went by, and the birder looked at her and remarked to me that he didn't like to see women running - strangely overlooking the fact that I'm a woman. Oddly enough, his attitude rankles more now that I can't run - I would give anything to be able to lope off on my old 6-miler, relishing my fitness and my freedom, utterly indifferent to the opinions of men.

Bad news: A tufted puffin turned up in the Faroe Islands a few days ago - and was promptly shot. 

Bad news: It was the last day for our MEPs in the European Parliament yesterday. There were tears because we're going, and a singing of Auld Lang Syne. There were gracious words from Michel Barnier and Ursula von der Leyen. There was regret from the Green MEP Molly Scott Cato.

Then Farage took the floor, and all graciousness and regret ended with triumphant gloating from him, Widdecombe, and other small-minded Brexit party MEPs as they waved Union Jacks - thereby deliberately breaking a rule of the parliament. Farage was cut off before he'd finished talking which was satisfying, but I really wanted to say to the Chairwoman, Mairead McGuinness, "Sorry that you had to deal with these mannerless thugs." And I'm sorry most of all that they're English.

Driving across moorland east of Ledmore, I was startled by a huge bird rising from the ground to the right of the road. A number of hoodies and ravens and a buzzard that went up with it distracted me for a while - and I next spotted the eagle in the distance, heading for a low ridge to the left.


It had looked so large I'd expected it to be a sea eagle - but clearly it was an immature goldie. Perhaps it was a female, although as I saw it at unusually close quarters even a male bird would have impressed with its size.

There was probably a carcass lying hidden in the rough grass of the moor, but mindful that this was a meal to the birds, I curbed my curiosity and drove on.

Parking at the end of a forestry track, I'd walked for only a few minutes when the sound of crossbills came faintly to me, and soon a handful went skipping over chattering and vanished beyond the conifers. At one point, an awful racket came from the forest, and the birds flew about agitatedly in places I didn't have a good view of. An unseen wren took up the general hue-and-cry and churred loudly from a tangle of dead branches on the ground. I wondered if there was a pine marten in there, but although I waited for ages, the noise eventually died down and I was none the wiser. After a bit of walking and retracing of steps I finally found eleven crossbills settled and feeding in a larch tree.


I could see only one definite adult male (the red bird). It flew to the top of the tree at one point and lifted its wings away from its body in what might have been a warning or threatening posture. I believe the deep yellow birds are males, and this is borne out by the presence of a red smudge on the flank of the individual in the picture below.


Below is a picture I took up the quarry road in August last year. At a distance, the spruce trees looked as though they were dying back - but zooming in with the camera, I realised that the pale, yellowish clusters were young cones. Already, you could see that the cone crop was going to be phenomenal.


Crossbills are said to breed at various times of the year, in order to take advantage of ripened cones; and this was confirmed by our sighting of three streaky juvenile birds not far from this site in November last year.

Driving home, I spotted a few more crossbills from the car, and also a fairly large flock of siskins. Approaching Ledmore Junction, I glanced up into the sky - and immediately braked and reversed into the nearest passing-place. A golden eagle - maybe the one from the drive out - was hanging in the sky, and I clicked off some shots from the car.


I say "hanging" in the sky but of course it was moving slowly over me all the time, which must be why I failed to get a sharp shot! The bird wasn't flying; it was simply sailing, using whatever little wind there was - and the only time I saw it move its wings, it was not so much a flap as a sort of grudging twitch of the fingered ends, casual and lazy and oh-so-cool. Absolutely fabulous.  

Setting off across the dam, I peeped over the wall to see if there was a dipper there - and just below were two whooper swans.

The small wader on one of the spiky sandstone islands off Tarbat Ness was very distant, and mostly asleep; but it did occasionally lift its head to reveal the dark bill with orange base of a purple sandpiper.


Tree sparrows are also on the Tarbat Ness list, but again, this was our first sighting of them here - thanks to whoever keeps the bird feeders in the car park topped up! Some stunning yellowhammers were also present.


Stonechats were seen, but a skylark and a redshank were heard only. Many hundreds of pink-footed geese were grazing on the farm fields; it was tempting to scan the flock carefully for any "specials" but the light was going by now and it had started to rain, so we set off on the drive back west.

The Iceland gull was again in the harbour, joining a throng of great black-backed, herring, and black-headed gulls cruising about as a fishing boat transferred its catch to a truck.



With a bad-weather start to 2020, the year list is growing very slowly; so it's nice to get an early white-winger. And perhaps this year, glaucous gull will be back on the list. It's funny how quickly you adapt your expectations in a new place; we saw our first glaucous in 2014, soon after we'd moved here - and I've got so used to seeing them, I felt a bit indignant at their absence in 2019. If there's one thing I should have learnt over the years, it's never to take birds (any birds!) for granted.

A walk above the Braes again brought no crossbills in the plantations - they certainly seem to have moved on; but a stonechat on the open hillside was a welcome sight. A female was also present.

 
Down at the harbour later I wished that I had gone there first and got better light for a shot of the Iceland gull.


The viking gull was present, as was a black-headed gull - not so common here.

The Met Office gave a very accurate forecast today of a window of bright weather between showers, starting at 2 pm. Too late to go far so I just drove up the road to Ardmair.

Apart from several shags and a great northern diver there was nothing to be seen on the choppy water. A faint sound came to me through the wind and I finally spotted a distant raven against the sky, flying in an agitated manner over the Keanchulish estate. Then something large rose beneath it and flapped onwards - a white-tailed sea eagle.

  
It was an immature bird. It came quite close but was always high as it cruised above the sheep fields and vanished over the sea.

After a brief and unusually successful shopping trip (new walking boots for Greger, gloves and a fleece for me) to Inverness, and a good lunch in Girvans, we drove out to Alturlie. It was nice to enjoy the bustle of the city and then swap it for the windswept shore of the Moray Firth. As we drove down to the water over the level crossing, a flock of waders in flight further along turned white underparts to the sun and then landed. I assumed they were redshanks - a wader we can generally be sure of seeing here. But for now I was mesmerised by the floating rafts of scaup, probably driven into the bay by strong westerlies.



The waders further along proved to be at least fifty knot and two or three bar-tailed godwits - as well as a handful of oystercatchers.




I snapped them from the car without flushing them. There were no redshanks, but in the field on the other side of the road, half a dozen curlews were foraging in stubble. Also present on the water - a flock of wigeon and a male and a female goldeneye. A nice duck-and-wader fix before the long drive home.

It was a windy day that threatened rain, although in the end it stayed dry. A great northern diver on a restless sea at Ardmair was a welcome sight on January 1st.


A boggy walk above the Braes brought a large flock of siskin, and a smaller one of lesser redpolls. I heard the "dweeb" call which I've heard before and which I think is a contact call. The call we heard from yesterday's bird was different, also rising, but sharper; and is recorded on the xeno-canto website as an alarm call - which fits, as we were probably alarming it.


I doubt now whether the redpoll yesterday had a particularly "squashed-in" bill. It did have bright white underparts and a bull-necked appearance, but lessers can sometimes look like this. I think.

Coal tits were also present. I then listened and looked around for crossbills. I saw crossbills here first on 19th December, and they were still around two days ago. But today - not a peep of one! This. Is. Typical.