Island of Eagles, and their Ancestors

Sitting beside my computer on a blue but chilly January day in the wilds of Essex, I cannot help but cast my mind back one more time, to Scotland, and its wildlife spectacles. In particular, to Emma and my trip to the Isle of Skye, its bays and Cuillin hills, the ragged mountains plunging into the, under an intemperate, grey and angry sky around the time of the Autumn equinox.

The East Coast of Scotland, where Skye sits, is something of a haven for Raptors, but they are not always as conspicuous as one might hope. At first glance this rugged place seems birdless. A couple of days into the trip, avoiding the near constant ribbons of rain which drench the dramatic landscape on Autumn days, we got our wallets out and paid a guy to take us to the birds. Andy of Skye Wildlife Tours took us on a day long van tour of the island, using his expert local knowledge to show us some of the birds which make this island famous. From our first stop, we watched a white-rumped ringtail Hen Harrier coast along a rain soaked glen, scanning for prey before disappearing from sight. Pairs of Golden Eagles floated above the moorland, dark against the grey sky during gaps in the rain. Rain isn’t good for raptors, preventing the thermals on which they ride from forming.  Perversely well camouflaged on the ground, despite the golden shawl of feathers around their nape, in the skies of Skye they are unmistakable, floating on long, broad wings. In their pairs, the size difference the sexes show is remarkable. Females are huge. Males are somewhat smaller, by up to a third, it seemed. This is a characteristic shared by many raptors, which perhaps allows some niche differentiation, minimising competition for food resources between the sexes as the females pursue larger prey, or else simply maximises the surface area the female can offer to her eggs for incubation. Sparrowhawks and Goshawks show this dimorphism even more markedly. Persecuted and revered, often at the same time, down the centuries, the West Coast, where deer stalking is a far more popular pastime than grouse shooting which dominates in the Eastern Cairngorms, offers some sanctuary from the residual persecution which some Golden Eagles still face. Across the Northern Hemisphere, the Golden Eagle remains one of the most successful large birds of prey, taking mammals off mountains and in winter, eating carrion at carcasses, including those of deer felled by ‘sportsmen’ and deer managers. Where the RSPB engages in deer control to protect early regrowth of Caledonian pine forests, they still leave the gralloch and some of the carcasses as a winter food source for these extraordinary, semi-mythic birds.

White Tailed Eagle, Isle of Skye

 

Historically, the impact of persecution was even worse for Scotland’s other Eagle species. The White Tailed Eagle has faced local extinction. Sometimes called the White Tailed Sea Eagle, it is another year round resident of this unforgiving coastline. It enjoys, but is not tied to the coast, quite capable of hunting and thriving inland. It became extinct around the turn of the 20^th century in Scotland, but a successful reintroduction programme using individuals from Norway, along the coast of which they can be surprisingly numerous, has enabled it to approach its historic numbers. We saw no less than 14 of these magnificent birds, huge outstretched wings resembling doors, the fabled flying barn door no less, on our van safari through Skye’s hills, a juvenile, identified by his not having a white tail, passing confidently just a few metres over our heads as we stood on one of the small piers there, on slow flapping wings, waders and ducks erupting in panic to keep away from this great predator. In more recent years, a reintroduction to the Isle of Wight in Hampshire has led to these birds soaring once again over Southern England, indeed, I have seen such an individual drifting over Essex, and famously one overflew the March for Nature in London in 2022. One hopes they will eventually look as at home on the South Coast of England as they do on the West Coast of Scotland.

White Tailed Eagle, Isle of Skye

Our van day was completed by a range of waders, waterfowl and distant seabirds, as well as the obligatory red deer, watching us curiously from high hills, the inaccessible, to all but the most seasoned of human mountaineers, Black Cuillins, huge basalt Munroes plunging into the glens and into the wild Atlantic Ocean.  Our closest encounter with White Tailed Eagles came on a boat trip from Portree, where we embarked on the Stardust despite the rain and tall sea, with remarkably low expectations.  First, just a few minutes out, we met with another giant, the huge arching back of a five or so metre long, juvenile Minke Whale, who broke the surface a couple of times to the gasps of assembled onlookers before disappearing beneath the waves, disappearing into the murky depths. Gannets and Great Black Backed Gulls excitedly snatching the fish stunned by the wake of the mighty beast.  But the boatman had another spectacular in store, as he threw a couple of dead fish, fishmonger discards, from the back of the boat. The birds reaction was not instant, the adult White Tailed Eagle waiting on a cliff, perhaps reluctant to get his feathers too wet in the rain and spray, but after watching the Gulls grab a couple, jealously kicked in, and down he came, stooping, wings swung back, on these easy pickings. He swung his big yellow talons forward and grabbed the fish off the water surface, easily, before climbing off, back to his clifftop perch. What a magnificent bird, and a magnificent encounter. The behaviour may not be fully natural, an opportunistic reaction to human activity, White Tailed Eagles do not typically grab fish off the sea like Ospreys, but it was certainly spectacular, to see such an awesome predator, and so close!

An Corran Megalosaurus Footprint.

 

Also on Skye, and at Emma’s suggestion, we sought out and found a close encounter with one of the Eagle’s, and the gulls, mighty ancestors. In the mudstone of An Corran beach, we paid a visit to Skye’s Middle Jurassic period, and walked in the 160 or so million year old footsteps of a Megalosaurid theropod dinosaur, traces from deep prehistory. Its three toed footprints were clear, and clearly recalled those of birds in more modern muds. But in Megalosaurus, here was a predator to rival even the Eagles. A toothy biped, six metres nose to tail, and as tall as a tall man, Megalosaurus was quite likely something of an active predator upon the herbivorous Stegosaurs and Camptosaurs with which it shared its environment, it was the dominant predator of its time. The dinosaur-descended Eagles are its worthy successors, and it is sobering to reflect on how close these magnificent aerial hunters so nearly joined the Megalosaurus in extinction. But the eagles are recovering, they are spectacular, we saw them, and they are wonderful.  

Crested Tit and Red Squirrel

 I took a woodland stroll, on one of those rare sunny, early Autumn days in the Highlands, heading to the RSPB’s reserve at Loch Garten, on the edge of Abernethy Forest. Red Admirals basked on a mini digger in the car park, enjoying the warming sunshine ahead of their migration. I take the path past the new buildings, under the dappled shade. Although Garten is a pine woodland, it still takes on autumnal colours, as the birch understory turns to yellow, and the few scattered Rowans take on vivid shades of orange before the leaves drop.

Today was the first day the Visitor’s Centre is closed, and I am not alone, a few tourists wander bewildered in frustrated hope of coffee, and the bird feeders still hang, full of peanuts, against the red pine trunks, among the big plantation trees fringing the paths through the wet bog woodland. Chaffinches and coal tits are in attendance, making use of the provided bounty of peanuts, but there are scarcer, less familiar birds here. I eat my lunch and settle on one of the carved wooden benches.

 

The crested tit is heard before it is seen. They are vocal little birds and their call is distinctive, a high, surprisingly loud, slightly confrontational sounding trill. Then it emerges from the small pine sapling and pecks at the peanuts, confiding as a Robin, and as at home on the feeders as a Blue Tit in a suburban garden.  A tiny bird, only a little bigger than a coal tit, grey and prominently crested, a delicate pattern of black markings picking out the facial features, and distinctly warm, red brown coloured eyes catching the Autumn sunshine.

 

In the British Isles, Crested Tits are confined to the Cairngorms region, tied closely to the Caledonian pine woods there. They are reputed to be shy; though these individuals seemed as bold as any garden bird, happily making use of the peanuts provided for them. They are found throughout Europe, and are not even closely confined to pine woods across much of their range, leading to speculation the Scottish birds may be genetically distinct. Relatively sedentary birds, there cannot be a great deal of gene flow between this population and those separated by the length of Great Britain or the broad North Sea. So they cling on in relative isolation, doing their thing as they have done since the ice age. While in Autumn and Winter they can be drawn down to feeders in the woods, in Spring and Summer, during the breeding season, they are almost undetectable, remaining concealed in the high canopy, frustrating the summer birders who come looking for them, unless they are lucky enough to spot one or more dropping down to a puddle for water.

 

My feeder and two crestie companions draw a small circle of admirers, I am not the only birder with a camera who has noticed the light is good today. And something of a show of woodland wildlife is unfolding, as the low blaeberry shrubs rustle and part, and a young Red Squirrel gingerly approaches. He clambers up the log from which my feeder hangs, dappled sunlight catching his deep russet fur. He knows we are here, and still approaches, nevertheless his approach is far more cautious than that of a park Grey Squirrel with which readers in England are more familiar. He is notably more cautious than his continental cousins, which, somewhat counterintuitively, remain the common parkland squirrel from Paris to Krakow to Korea. He watches the crestie on the feeder, and then, surprisingly, seems to wait his turn on it. I manage to capture a few photos of these two icons of the Scottish pine woods, with the two in the same frame. The Red Squirrel’s story in the UK and its decline, first due to persecution and then to competition with greys, and the squirrel pox introduced with them, is well known, but here in the highlands, though never in the densities that Greys reach in deciduous woodlands down South, they do quite well.

 

They’re not uncommon elsewhere in Europe, where they remain the only squirrel species, and in some places can be found in urban parks, living a similar lifestyle to the greys in English cities. But here among the tall pines they still feel wild, native and exciting. And exceedingly beautiful. The pine woods here are not welcoming to the Greys, failing to offer nutrition in sufficient densities to support these bulkier, lazier arboreal beasts, but there is enough food here to allow the reds, which are by no means a pinewood specialist, the chance to survive and, justabout, for now, to thrive.

 

Puffins- the spell of the Northern Monks.

The little tourist boat out of Ulver Ferry on the Isle of Mull drew towards the towering cliffs of Lunga, largest and northernmost of the Trennish Isles, the chain of rocky little basalt islands in the Inner Hebrides, north of the famous Fingal’s Cave on the isle of Staffa, that great monument to undersea volcanism and geological forces. The water we crossed was crystal clear, and rich in life, fish weaving between fronds of waving kelp beneath the surface, moon jellies, and occasionally more unusual cnidaria, drifting everywhere. At one point even Common Dolphins were leaping beside us.  We docked at a rocky promontory on the island and made our way ashore on the columnar basalt, climbing a short cliff path. The skipper had warned us the birds would hypnotise us, that we’d risk falling into a trance on the cliff path, and would have to come back to the boat without seeing the spectacular heart of the seabird city which lines the steepest cliffs. His warning was spot on, but not heeded.

We sat up on the cliff top, among the wild flowers, the Bird’s foot trefoil and Burnett moths, on the rabbit-grazed, short grass, and watched the comings and goings of the Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica) for hours. Birds flew in off the clear blue water, on wings beating rapidly, with thick, vivid coloured beaks full of silver sandeels.  Adults with food swiftly disappeared into their burrows, even Puffins are not averse to nicking their neighbours’ food, and to the gulls and skuas a Puffin with food on land is an obvious target.  So, they take their food underground hurridly, and unload it for the subterranean Puffling, the single, fluffy youngster waiting in the burrow.  Puffins without bills full of food seemed to enjoy a more leisurely lifestyle, taking some time to enjoy the sun and each other, pairs bill-rubbing and calling to each other, enjoying the bonds which hold them together, companionable, almost romantic. We were, naturally, enchanted by these entertaining little seabirds, and never made the journey across the little island to the spectacular Guillemots and Kittiwakes up on the towering sea stacks.

My paternal Grandma loved Puffins, and as such I must have drawn and painted hundreds of pictures of them, and bought puffin calendars and birthday cards for her every year. Images of them adorned her home.  They were here favourite bird, and as such have always held a special place in my heart. However I was in my mid-twenties by the time I saw one, on another chain of islands on the West coast, right down in the Scillies.  Puffins tend to live far from us, on rocky offshore islands, like the Scillies or the Trennish, or famously on Lundy, where the Bristol Channel meets the Atlantic.  They visit the coastline only briefly, setting up in April, and gone by the end of July. Their vanishing act is thorough and though wintering puffins were encountered at sea from time to time, it wasn’t fully understood until the advent of geotagging.  Once their Puffling has come waddling out under the sky for the first time, and taken to the sea, the parents remaining tie to land is severed. They shed the bright, temporary sheath which has grown around their bill, and darker feathers grow around the eye, masking the big, white face patches.  They loose the ability to fly during the Autumn moult, and spend the winter upon the ocean waves, living like the penguins of the Southern hemisphere, undertaking deep dives, wings adapted for ‘flying’ underwater. The black and white countershading Puffins, plus several related Auks share with Penguins are an example of convergent evolution, where similar evolutionary pressures lead to similar adaptations.  They retain the ability to fly only because of the need to avoid land predators, and only in the breeding season, to reach their cliff-top nesting sites, and they are at their most graceful underwater.  Then, come March or April, they return to their home island, and reunite with their lifelong partner, smartly attired once again. Some compare Puffins to clowns, given their colourful features and ‘eye makeup,’ and their scientific name compares them to monks, Fratercula arctica means ‘little Brother of the North.’ The name Puffin once applied to any burrow-nesting sea bird, hence the confusing scientific name of the Manx Shearwater, Puffinus puffinus.

Puffins are members of the Auk family, Alcidae, and are related to the Guillemot and Razorbill, as well as the extinct Great Auk. The family resemblance is apparent.  Unlike their relatives, puffins nest not on precarious ledges on the cliffs, but in burrows at the cliff-tops, usually taking advantage of those abandoned by rabbits, though they are capable of digging their own, and often do, take note of the sharp grey claws on their feet next time you are close to one.  A single egg is laid underground, in a chamber carved out for the purpose. The chick remains underground in relative safety, out of the reach of Herring Gulls and Raptors which occasionally prey on Guillemot and Razorbill chicks. Puffins also differ from their relatives in their winter habits. Razorbills and Guillemots can often be seen in winter, forming big rafts just offshore from their breeding colonies, remaining visible to birders onshore all year round, but Puffins are always absent from these agglomerations, preferring to spend the winter in the vast, open Atlantic, the Bay of Biscay and the North Sea, rich fishing grounds to which they have been tracked by modern telemetry techniques.

Puffins have a number of predators, with Gulls and Arctic Skuas all too keen to steal their hard won catch of Sandeels, which the young Puffling relies on almost exclusively, and Great Skuas, Great Black Back Gulls and birds of prey such as Peregrines, will occasionally prey on the adult Puffins. They are even, in some parts of their range, still hunted by man, though not in Britain.  Climate Change, and the loss of Sandeels as a result, and as a result of overfishing remain the biggest threats they face. They are confined to relatively few colonies around the North Atlantic, largely on islands off North America and North-Western Europe, and this reliance on a small number of sites led to the Atlantic Puffin’s listing as Vulnerable by the IUCN, and they are Red-Listed as Birds of Conservation Concern.

Yet at some of their colonies they are thriving, and one of those seems to be that of the Isle of Lunga. Rich, clear Atlantic seas offer them the food they need, and they are bothered little by the tourists who continue to visit their island breeding sites in considerable numbers. They are confiding and allow close approach, and photography. A few nest still at Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire, alongside the Gannets and the occasional visiting Albatross, and though closed this year given the unfortunate impact of the ongoing HPAI epidemic, the Farne Islands still host a healthy population of these charming, entertaining little sea birds. Go and see them.

 

Lapwings

 A light spring mist lies across the lush green grazing marshes of Essex. The tiny herd of cattle stare me down with curiosity as I begin walking across the open field, the morning dew soaking off the grass onto my trousers. A cuckoo calls distantly, one of the closing headliners of the fading dawn chorus. I am looking for something else.  I am alerted to the presence of the bird I am looking for by its alarm call. It lifts into the air on broad, square wings, black and white, climbing quickly and turning sharply, and bears down on me, whistling its curious electronic whistle. The adult Lapwing makes several passes over me, close enough to let me know I am not wanted in its territory, but never close enough that I feel in danger of being pecked.  Its underside is bright white, its wingtips black, its eyes fixed on the potential danger, and its call almost otherworldly, to my mind recalling science fiction ray-guns, or Clangers, perhaps.  To others it may be the archetypal sound of the British countryside in May and early June. The reason for the adult Lapwing not wanting me there, and its reluctance to leave, is close by, at the muddy margin of a small pond, once a creek now cut off from the tidal river, pecking around in the mud. A tiny, awkward, fluffy chick, with a crown of mottled brown and a white collar, it’s one of the few chicks in whose downy plumage one can see the markings of the adult. A tiny, precarious little life, prodding around in one of the few remaining sections of its habitat in the county. The landowners here are rightly proud of their breeding Lapwings, and of the habitat they live in, and go to considerable lengths to protect these birds.

Lapwing, Speyside, Scotland, May 2023

Breeding Lapwings are not a typical part of the countryside in South East England. They have declined significantly since the 1950s, with the advent of intensive farming, and the loss of grazing marshes. They tend to do well on nature reserves managed for them, with water levels and grazing tightly controlled, and predators controlled or else excluded by metres and metres of electric fencing. Where I am now, a long way from Essex, North of the Border and then some, in the lush, green glens of Strathspey, Lapwings, and other farmland waders, are still a feature of the wider landscape, where lower intensity farming methods persist, though conservation organisations build links with farmers to promote their conservation. Elsewhere, small numbers of dedicated farmers and landowners are supporting the Lapwing’s return to the wider countryside, but they face an uphill struggle. They require very specific management, with grass short enough to allow a nesting adult a line of sight, for early identification of ground predators. They are highly vulnerable to predators, especially where shrinking colonies no longer allow a coordinated mobbing response.  They prefer shallow, standing fresh water in their nesting fields to persist into June and July to allow the chicks to feed, and cannot tolerate complete dessication of the soil, a challenge in times of changing climate.

Lapwing, Speyside, May 2023

To many birders Lapwings are very familiar, particularly from their wintering aggregations, their big flocks wheeling in the sky, turning from green-black to brilliant white as the birds bank and turn to evade a passing Peregrine or a Marsh Harrier. They are one of winter’s great spectacles. I recall immense flocks wheeling skyward against a backdrop of distant skyscrapers and wind turbines at Rainham Marshes on the edge of London many times.  One winter flock might comprise locally bred individuals, alongside birds from the near continent and beyond. A study from the Netherlands found that Dutch birds travelled to England, and to North Africa for the winter before returning to the same Dutch fields in Spring. They are individually faithful, as far as we can tell, to their wintering sites, but sometimes snowfall or other severe weather can displace them, and they need to undertake movements South and West to find food. They are largely short-range migrants.  Sometimes their flocks can be seen overflying even urban areas as they search desperately for a gap in the snow.

Lapwing, Lincolnshire, 2021

They are one of those birds which were they scarce or rare we would look at in absolute wonder. They’re a member of the Plover family, perhaps feral pigeon sized, topped with a smart black crest, over a friendly looking face in black and white, with big dark eyes and a short bill. Their undersides are white, and their back a palette of iridescence, mostly green but with notes of red and purple depending how they catch the light. Back in 2011 and somewhat blasé about Lapwings, given the large wintering numbers at some of my local patches, I was a volunteer at the Gialova Lagoon in Greece, where, one bright September day, in the heat, I encountered a Lapwing on the edge of some scrubland, and told my supervisor, she went running off after it, and came back cock a hoop to have found such a beautiful and unfamiliar bird.

Lapwings, RSPB Rainham Marshes, Greater London, 2011

But again, with such a decline in their breeding population, their wheeling summer displays and territory holding electronic sounding calls in an English, or even a Scottish summer, may become confined to specially managed reserves, or worse, a thing of the past. And, while managing for them is not easy, and can be costly, and thankless, it would be a great sadness not to see and hear that. And some people are investing the resources and energy required for Lapwings to return to the Essex countryside. And indeed, later in the season, when I returned to that site, the chicks had become two flighted juveniles, short crested, scaly backed versions of their parents, and it was great to see them making their way across the sea wall, to the Saltmarsh, to feed up on the wealth of shoreline invertebrates, before moving on, to wintering grounds near or far.

Emperors of the Moor.

 I love the big Saturniid moths. Ever since I was a kid and I got to watch an Indian Moon Moth emerge from its cocoon at home, a story of which my parents love to remind me, I have loved the big Saturniids, their big, ornamented, often bright green caterpillars, their silk-spinning and their cocoons, a palace for their pupae, and the big furry faces of the adult moths, with their dark compound eyes, their soft and luxuriant looking fur, and their surprisingly appealing faces.  Huge, patterned wings of eye spots, translucent windows and elegant pastel colours. The Saturniid moths are heavy duty night butterflies of immense beauty.   Although a group of them are called ‘Giant Silk Moths’ they are not closely related to Bombyx mori the domestic species so brutally harvested to make ties and party dresses. They are big, widely distributed, heavy moths, and the family includes the largest moth in the world, the Giant Atlas Moth (Attacus atlas).

Here in Europe, and Britain especially, we have something of a paucity of Saturniid moths. While the beautiful Spanish Moon Moth (Graellsia isabellae), a species I dream of seeing in the wild, lives in Mediterranean Europe, and the Tau Emperor (Aglia tau) sits just across the channel as close as Northern France and Germany, we only have one breeding Saturniid in these islands, and it is far from the biggest of them. However, the Emperor Moth, Saturnia pavonia, is a stunning beast, no less.  Males are finely patterened with rich grey forewings with eye spots, and purple fringing, and just a hint of a snakes’ head pattern on the wingtips, recalling some of its giant relatives. Their hindwings are orange, with dark veins like window lead, and another set of eye spots.  The females are grey, but no less spectacular, slightly larger, broad in the abdomen, and retaining the dark venation, with purple notes like the heather over which they fly. The eye spots are presumably aposematic colouring to threaten potential predators, and do look owl-like. The highly active males patrol the heather and grassland on sunny days in April and May. First impression is of an orange moth, the colour of its hindwings, often part concealed at rest. Having done all their eating as larvae, adult emperors do not feed, representing just a short-lived dispersal stage to mate and produce eggs.  Males spend their lives frantically looking for an opportunity to breed before their stored supply of energy runs out.  Their broad, feathered antennae serve to detect the chemical signals given off by females. Antennae provide a way of distinguishing the sex of Saturniids, under less pressure to detect chemical signals over long distances, the females have relatively thin antennae.  These moths can be attracted using a pheromone lure, designed to imitate the chemical signals of a female Emperor Moth. It works on similar principles to lures used to control pest species like Codling Moth or House Moths, but we were not using it to harm the moths, merely as an opportunity to observe and marvel.  When we, myself and a few colleagues from Butterfly Conservation, hung up the pheromone lure, from a fence in a little birch-and-heather patchwork not far from Aviemore in the Cairngorm Mountains, the male Emperors were with us in minutes.  Confused, they searched for the female, perching up on pines, posts and people, fluffy winged bundles of sexual frustration. The source of their confusion was soon taken away and repackaged, the moths’ energy reserves are valuable, and, the onlookers satisfied with excellent views, the moths melted out over the heather moorland once again.

Emperor Moth, Aviemore, May 2023

Females are relatively sedentary, seldom wandering far from their host plant, retaining their energy to distribute their eggs, and to escape from predators should the need arise.  They need to save their resources. As such, their lifespan tends to exceed that of the males, sometimes spending 10 days on the wing. A proximity to the host plant and a sedentary lifestyle saves them the active hunt for somewhere to lay that is a part of the lives of longer-lived lepidoptera, and like most Saturniidae, they don’t seem interested in finding the correct host plant. Fortunately, the larvae have fairly broad tastes, munching on heathers, birch, bramble and several other plant species, contributing to their surprisingly wide range in the UK, from the Highlands to open country in Essex and Kent, and down to Cornwall.

Upon hatching, the larvae are black and hairy at first, growing quickly, until by high summer the caterpillars are well grown and magnificent. A large Emperor Moth larva is bright green, studded with dayglow yellow, or sometimes other colours, points like gemstones, each surrounded by hairs, or perhaps bristles. It spends its summer eating, before spinning a cocoon, undergoing its final moult, and becoming a pupa. It overwinters in this state, as like all lepidoptera its body is essentially turned to soup and rebuilt into its final form. In Spring the moth emerges again, through a unique one-way valve in its cocoon, in contrast to other Saturniids, which instead produce chemicals to melt a hole through their silken palace. Then they face the world and fly, the cycle beginning anew.

Emperor Moth Larva on Orkney

Keep an eye out from April-early June for the Emperor Moth. They can be seen across the country, I have encountered it on the coastal marshes of Essex, the West Country heaths, up here in the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland, and even, as a fat green, yellow-studded, heather munching larva, next to the Ring of Brodgar on the Isle of Mull.  Sometimes the larvae are easier to find than the moth, and tend to be active at the times of year we’re taking our summer holiday, so take a look for them too. In heather habitats their bright green colouration and markings make them surprisingly easy to spot.  And be impressed, by our only native Saturniid moth. A truly magnificent beast.

Snospurven! Snow Buntings, Plectrophenax nivialis, and all I know about them.

 At the lower station of the Cairn Gorm funicular railway, just above Loch Morlich, not far from Aviemore and part of Britain’s most noted Ski resort, there is a small, and usually astoundingly busy car park, surrounded by high end tat shops and various small, ski-related enterprises.  Emma and I visited the Cairngorms’ eponymous mountain in the hope of catching up with the confiding Ptarmigan for which the lower slopes are noted. The heavens had, the night before, dumped impressive volumes of snow on the towering landscape, and, though some paths up to the Slopes were already well trodden, the mountains, for miles, were coated in a thick, deep blanket of white, softening their ragged edges. Snow brings a curious sense of silence, and seemed to dampen the hubbub of excited skiers, and we looked down on a winter wonderland, snow hanging in the branches of the pine woods of Rothiemurchus, all the way down to the loch shore and beyond.

Snow Bunting, Cairn Gorm, March 2023

There were, despite this being apparently the only centre of human activity for miles here, special, and especially beautiful, birds here. A small band of Snow Buntings perched on the sloping roof of the ski centre. They fluttered down to pick about in the snow beside the green, angular, corrugated iron structure, flashing black and white wings. They allowed close approach, unafraid of the people around. Eventually a small crowd of photographers, armed with long lenses, gathered, and the Snow Buntings were keen and obliging models. Charming birds of high altitudes and the high arctic, last time I visited the flock, apparently a fairly regular fixture around the lower car park and the higher Ptarmigan restaurant during the winter months, had already melted away to their breeding sites high up in the crags. Flocking, and moving around these lower slopes, and being confiding, are winter behaviours. They nest high in the rocky landscapes, males singing atop deserted and windswept crags, where people very seldom tread. Arctic/alpine specialists, they breed right up into Arctic Norway, Arctic Russia, Iceland and Arctic Canada, places of icy extremes. When I visited Arctic Norway, in high summer, ‘Snospurven,’ a ‘common breeding bird,’ were nowhere to be seen.  Both sexes become whiter in summer, as they feed around the snow line, grabbing the insects which drift up on thermals, to find themselves dropped just above the snow line, an easy meal for the Snow Buntings to take back to their chicks.  During the last ice age they thrived across Europe. What impact climate change will have on such specialists as these remains to be seen.

Snow Buntings, Cairn Gorm, March 2023

Britain’s only breeding Snow Buntings are the few hundred pairs in the highlands, but in winter, more do appear in the country, and tend to choose a habitat which couldn’t be more different to the Cairngorms. They gather in small parties on stony ground, usually on shingle beaches, and are a regular fixture in some spots along the East coast. Here, their white-and-sandy winter plumage provides remarkable camouflage, blending readily with the Carstone and iron stained Hunstanton chalk pebbles of North Norfolk.  Here too they can be confiding, on a recent trip to Titchwell it was a joy to find these small and cheerful little birds scuttling around our feet. They can turn up as far South as Kent and Essex, but favour the North and East, making landfall at night as they cross the North Sea from Scandinavia and beyond, from places which make the North Norfolk winter seem mild.

Snow Bunting on the beach at Titchwell, Norfolk, December 2022

When we returned from our fruitless trudge through the snow on Cairngorm, without having seen a Ptarmigan, and a pair of noisy, cronking Raven the only new species on our day list of two species, we found 30 or so Snow Buntings now gathered, and a small crowd of photographers admired them, from just a couple of metres away.  What a privilege to encounter such charming and special birds, at such close quarters.

Cairn Gorm in the Snow. 

Snow Bunting.

Gannets. Magnificent Gannets, and everything I know about them.

I recently returned from a trip to Lewis, in the Western Isles of Scotland, a land of plentiful seabird life. One species in particular seemed ubiquitous when scanning the open sea, I don't think, on the ferry crossing, I recall a moment when at least one white cruciform shape, on stiff black tipped wings, was not in view. We'd see them fishing in the bay at Ullapool, taking advantage perhaps of the clear, calm water to better pick out the shapes of fish, diving on swept back wings, a single point plunging like a spear into the sea. We'd see them following the boat crossing the Minch, or, in good numbers, following every passing fishing boat. And during our time on the island, though we saw many other seagoing birds while scanning the horizon, Gannets seemed to crop up every day. And well they might, these magnificent birds have shown a consistent, albeit slow increase in population over the past 30 years (JNCC), and while there are no colonies on Lewis itself, Sula skeir, which takes its name from the Old Norse for 'Gannet Island' hosts a substantial colony, some 42 miles North of the Island. Still more nest on that outermost of the Western Isles, St Kilda, and the birds are capable of undertaking fishing trips of up to 270 miles.

Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus), to give them their full English name, breed only in large colonies, with several of these scattered around the coasts of Northern and Western Britain. The largest is at Bass Rock in the Irish Sea, the largest on the UK Mainland, and also one of the most southerly, is at Bempton Cliffs on the Yorkshire coast (RSPB) an RSPB reserve, where, in contrast to many other seabirds, their numbers continue to rapidly increase. A birder I met during a recent visit to Bempton told me he could recall when Gannets were relatively scarce at this site. Now they cover huge swathes of cliff, and fill the sky. Their fat chicks loafed on clifftop nests, heads lolling awkwardly on the rocks, huge black bills with sagging skin. They are odd, ungainly, and so relaxed many of them could be mistaken for corpses, causing Natty and I had brief anxious moments when we first beheld them in their clifftop domain. Gannet nestlings have a curious habit of looking dead when they are sleeping. Adults were constantly on the move, early in the season they could be seen ripping up grass from the clifftops to build their nests, or moving out to sea gathering fish to feed their chicks growing appetites. Non breeding juveniles share these clifftop nest sites, perhaps to learn the way of life of the colony, to observe the feeding behaviour of the adults, and learn the best fishing grounds.

Gannets are, despite their positive population trend, which defies that of almost all other British seabirds, Amber Listed by the RSPB, though the IUCN and Europe both consider the species 'Least Concern'. Though numerous and increasing, they really are almost entirely confined to large colonies, of several thousand breeding pairs. The nests in the colonies are surprisingly evenly spaced, typically just outside pecking distance, and peck, when faced with an intruder, they do indeed, with surprising brutality, comparable perhaps to Gulls and quite unlike more 'genteel' species like Auks. Wandering Gannet chicks have been seen killed by their neighbours when straying too far from their nests (Nicholson). Sometimes they even peck their partners when they arrive back from fishing trips, before pair recognition occurs and they bond again with noisy displays of bill rubbing, which Adam Nicholson describes as a kind of play fighting. They make very good parents, with two out of every three chicks fledging successfully.

The reasons for their bucking the seabird trend is unclear, but they are adaptable, and more than happy to follow the fishing boats and grab any discards, something they do in impressive numbers. From the shores of Lewis seldom did a fishing boat pass by without a small cloud of white crosses following it. The tourist boat from Bridlington in Yorkshire makes spectacular use of this ability, throwing fish overboard when passing the big colony at Bempton, attracting an enthusiastic following of Gannets.  The ability to feed on a range of pelagic fish of different sizes,  rather than be limited to Sandeels like the struggling Auks, probably makes them relatively resilient to local changes, as does the ability to travel many miles in order to catch them, though as to their breeding colonies they display some considerable fidelity to their fishing grounds during the breeding season. Gannets hunt by plunge diving from heights of about 25 metres, sweeping their wings back, their shape transforming into that of a short spear as they dive into the water, either siezing prey just below the surface, or, remarkably, powering down to depths of 30 metres or so, propelled on folded in wings, turning those supreme works of natural aeronautical engineering into simple paddles.  Their heads and necks are powerful and reinforced in order to survive the impact, and serrations on the insides of their bills grasp the fish they catch.

Gannets have relatively few predators. Among their predators is man, with the colony at Sula Skeir attracting a group of licenced commercial hunters from Ness, near Lewis' Northernmost point, to kill a limited number of juveniles every year. Though it does not seem to affect the Gannet's conservation status, and I'll not dwell on this too much, the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty To Animals (SPCA) have described the hunt as 'Barbaric' and called for a ban. I am drawn to agree with them.  Also among their enemies at sea are Great Skuas, which occasionally kill but more commonly just rob Gannets of their hard won food, and White Tailed Eagles, which are considered important predators of Gannets on the coasts of Norway, where both species are common.

 

There are more than one species of Gannet around the globe. The Cape Gannet (Morus capensis), often featured in documentaries about such phenomena as the Sardine Run, is distinguished from the Northern, our sort of Gannet, by the extensive of black on the tail and primaries. It breeds on six islands off the coasts of South Africa and Namibia, and is considered Endangered by the IUCN. The Australasian Gannet (M. serrator) is common and widespread, and increasing, along the temperate Southern coasts of Australia and New Zealand. The dramatically marked Boobies of Equatorial regions are slightly more distant relatives, retaining the generic name Sula.  The Northern Gannet colonies around the British Isles are globally important, hosting as much as 55% of their global breeding population, and they can be seen, while sea watching, almost anywhere, especially in the Spring and Autumn, and at their colonies, of which Bempton is probably the most visited and most accessible, and, for me, something of an annual pilgrimage. There are not just Gannets to be seen there, but Puffins, Guillemots, Fulmars, Kittiwakes and others, as well as fantastic cliff views. They hang about there well into August, though the site is best visited from April to June for the full show. The photos here were all taken on a recent visit to Bempton, at the beginning of August, where the presence of the Black Browed Albatross, which eluded me, offered me the excuse to head down there and enjoy avian spectacle and some twitcher camaraderie.

Above all, I find Gannets stunningly beautiful. Sharp, pointed, and profoundly wild, but equally stunningly elegant. They are the largest seabirds regularly found around Britain, though their colonies occasionally attract even bigger guests in the form of lost Albatrosses which have ended up on the wrong side of the equator. Their pure brilliant white body feathers, those jet black primaries, the warm yellow ochre of the neck and head, their graceful, long winged glide as they pass by in their small bands, often incorporating both adults and black feathered juveniles. I love the joy of their pair bonding displays. And I find them somewhat hopeful, a rare success story among the troubled guild of piscivorous seabirds of the North Western Atlantic.

A tale of joy and heartbreak- An unforgettable encounter in Orkney

A couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to visit the Orkney islands off the North coast of Scotland. A patchwork of ancient sites, standing stones, wild seas and cattle farms, of jewelled wild flower meadows and moorland in bloom, where blue butterflies and bumblebees live only in sheltered hollows, where Neolithic villages and places of worship stand testimony to the ingenuity of our ancient ancestors, Orkney is a remote, and fascinating place.

One afternoon, I drove in the sunshine to the RSPB’s Cottascarth viewpoint, on the moors not far from Finstown.  While on the road I encountered, and photographed, very badly as it turned out, a beautiful Oystercatcher chick, in the company of a parent. The chick still had some down, though its adult feathers had begun to show, and it was nearly ready to take to the skies. Oystercatchers breed in substantial numbers in Orkney’s farmland. I took the narrow, twisting track through farm buildings to the viewpoint, where, green-roofed and windowed, but still clearly crafted from abandoned croft buildings, stood the RSPB hide.  Optimistic, I waited and enjoyed the surroundings, hoping to catch a glimpse of a Hen Harrier.  The occasional call of a Curlew echoed from the hills, or an Oystercatcher alarm call rose from the farmland and the flock of linnet which alighted briefly on the roof of the hide. A few sheep grazed.  After about an hour the Harrier appeared, a male, a smart, grey bird, with black, fingered wingtips, a grey ghost over the moorland, hanging on wings with the characteristic dihedral.  Hen Harriers hunt in part by hearing, and by sight, and prey on voles, as well as young ground nesting birds.   The male made a couple of passes, his attention fully focussed on the ground below, looking for voles or any unfortunate small birds, before disappearing over the ridge into the valley behind. I waited another few minutes, hoping this magnificent bird would reappear, but he did not, and I began to make my way back to the small car park ready to head back to my camp site.

As made my way back to the car I saw the male glide over the place I had just been standing. With some disappointment at missing out on this close view, enjoyed his majestic hunting through binoculars. I headed back down to the coast roads. Driving slowly on empty roads with my eyes open for birds, I became aware of the mother Oystercatcher I had encountered earlier. She was loudly and aggressively mobbing something in the field, down beyond a low brow hidden from sight. She’d break away bto chase off a passing Hooded Crow, though these birds did not seem to go far, then returning to her target on the ground, strafing with her sonic weapon, her passes low and frequent, her calls rhythmic but high and frantic. I slowed down, wondering what could possibly have enraged her like this. Then, just 15 metres or so from my window, I saw what had happened. On top of a sad, white lump with feathers, feet extended toward the sky, stood a female Hen Harrier. Her golden yellow eyes, set in a subtle facial disc recalling an owl, glanced to me, before, unconcerned by me or the distraught mobbing of the adult Oystercatcher, returning to plucking her prize.

My heart in my mouth, I silently reached for my camera and grabbed a few photos through the passenger window.  I watched the bird, predator, as she continued to remove the downy feathers from her prey, scattering them to the wind like dandelion seeds, calmly, yet so alert, eyes scanning in all directions.  The adult did not relent from calling.

Suddenly the bird was on the move, a grey shape emerging from the bushes. A farm cat burst out from cover toward the bird of prey. With her wings spread, her imposing size was apparent. She struggled into the air with her prize, but it was a little too heavy, and she dropped it. The dead Oystercatcher chick flopped limp to the ground. She swooped in on it again, and stood on it, bearing a steely look, extending her wings to protect her prize.  But the farm cat was determined. The next spring it made, the bird was off and flying, back toward the hills, and the Oystercatcher chick was clasped firmly in the jaws of the tabby.  It sloped off, toward some farm buildings to enjoy its prize. I considered some attempt to scare the cat off, in the hope the Harrier would return, but I figured even semi-feral mammals must eat, and a cat brave enough to take on an adult Hen Harrier, talons and all, must be very hungry indeed.

My heart still in my mouth, I sat for a while,  as a band of thick, grey cloud rolled in over the sea, and the cool rain began to fall.  A double rainbow arced from the horizon. A confused and angry adult Oystercatcher stood on a fence post, yelling at the wind.

Falls of Clyde

On Thursday I was lucky enough, while North of the Border, to visit Scottish Wildlife Trust's reserve at Falls of Clyde. It sits beside the New Lanark UNESCO World Heritage Site, designated for its industrial history. Mills were established by Richard Arkwright in the 18th century beside the river Clyde's only waterfalls. Arkwright was certainly not noted for his philanthropy, but his successor at New Lanark, Richard Owen, a reformer and philanthropist turned the mills and the town into something of a social experiment and example of Utopian Socialism, a philosophy which he helped to found. Today the only industry there is a hydroelectric power station.

Today the site is largely a tourist attraction, and reached by a steep set of steps from the public car park, which sits between the village and the car park. Here several crows were mobbing a Buzzard, the only raptor I saw that day. Falls of Clyde is famous for its Peregrines, which are best seen in summer when they are nesting.  I passed among the stone mill buildings to the River Clyde.

In the shallow water where the river is relatively wide through the village of New Lanark itself, a Dipper was bobbing about on a moss covered rock. Throughout the wooded valley could be heard the roar of the waterfalls, ever present, continuous. The Corra Linn falls are the largest on the Clyde, and the riverside path offered views of the falling, churning white water.

Corra Linn on the Falls of Clyde.

The woodland which fringed the river seemed to be mixed in composition, featuring birch, oak and pine trees. When the open country outside the deep gorge could be seen from the path, snow capped peaks looked in the far distance. The woods echoed with passerine contact calls but they seemed reluctant to be seen, although ubiquitous friendly robins, and early singing great tits were seen, as well as a wren, busy in the undergrowth. On the river itself a single female and three smart male Goosander were about, the males resting on the bank yards from the cascading water.

A beautiful place.