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.  

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.

Wanderings in the Strangest Summer. 2nd-6th July 2020 Attenborough and Bempton

 On the second of July I headed, perhaps ill-advisedly, to Attenborough, and found it extraordinarily and uncomfortably peoply and doggy. The Visitors Centre, and thus the toilets, were still closed, and this unfortunately did no favours for the site. The most interesting wildlife encounter of the day was in Attenborough Village, when I encountered many, many Common Toadlets, beautiful and miniscule, some still bearing tiny tails. I managed to resuce some which had become stuck in a gutter and lurched awkwardly towards a drain grill. One Common Froglet was also among them. 

Following this rather mixed experience, I was rather unsure on the fifth, whether returning to Attenborough was a good idea, but between us Natalie and I decided Carsington was far too familiar, and Rutland Water simply too far. We did not, it turned out, regret it. I was still camera-less so there are no pictures from this trip-and I want a Bempton one for the share banner. 

We found the site again rather peoply, but perhaps the grey sky above and the stiff breeze which blew over acted as a deterrent, and it did not feel quite so busy. Dogs were again on the rampage on the central causeway, the temporary lack of wardening perhaps taken by some as licence for irresponsibility. Beside the semi-feral hounds, we saw a few passerines, and a lovely Green Sandpiper, probably a returning migrant, a hint of Autumn, was on the ridge and furrow. A huge abundance of Swifts and Sand Martins hunted insects, low over the water near the Tower Hide. A Kingfisher flashed between them, fighting the wind on a blur of wings. 

Attenborough hosted at least 10 Little Egrets, with six, later eight, counted on the ridge-and-furrow. The Common Terns which breed at Attenborough were active too, and, evidence perhaps of their maritime lineage, were apparently unperturbed by the wind. 

We walked up the riverside path as far as the Delta Sanctuary, before turning back, following the broad River Trent and its curves. There were plenty of insects about, to remind me of my paucity of Ladybird and Shieldbug ID skills. We saw some beautiful Damsels and Dragons including a beautiful male Banded Demoiselle, and a Small Tortoiseshell was an orange jewel in a moment of sunshine. 

Across the river we found half a dozen or so Black Tailed Godwit, still flushed orange in their breeding finery. Probably non breeding adults, or failed breeding birds, waders like these in July represent the vanguard of Autumn migration. As we watched them the heavens opened and the rain came down. We made our way back to the car, getting soaked to the skin. 

As we arrived at the car park the weather improved a little, and a Whitethroat and a Garden Warbler enjoyed the first of the season's blackberries. 

Birds Seen: Canada Goose, Greylag Goose, Mute Swan, Egyptian Goose, Gadwall, Mallard, Tufted Duck, Grey Heron, Little Egret, Cormorant, Moorhen, Coot, Lapwing, Black Tailed Godwit, Green Sandpiper, Black Headed Gull, Common Tern, Stock Dove, Woodpigeon, Swift, Kingfisher, Kestrel, Magpie, Carrion Crow, Sand Martin, Chiffchaff, Garden Warbler, Whitethroat, Starling, Blackbird, Sing Thrust, Robin, Goldfinch, Reed Bunting.

Metal Bird: Airbus A400M Atlas

Butterflies: Small Tortoiseshell, Meadow Brown, Peacock. 

Invertebrates: Aeshna spp, Blue Tailed Damselfly, Banded Demoiselle. 

Bempton Cliffs, Yorkshire, 6th July 2020

With lockdown restrictions easing further, Natty and I were, for the first time this year, able to make our annual pilgrimage to the RSPB's reserve at Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire.

Puffins at Bempton

The weather was largely fine, and we explored the clifftop viewpoints of this towering seabird city, busy, distinctively perfumed, and alive with sound, the cried of Kittywakes and the chattering of Razorbills filling the air. A pair of Razorbills preened each other affectionately, and a mother sheltered her baby, standing between the brown fluffy creature and the chalky face. A large baby Gannet, still covered in down but big and ungainly, a massive white ball of fuzz as long as the adult, was fed regurgitated fish from its parent's crop. Its wings were tiny, but the black points of its juvenile flight feathers had just begun to appear. Puffins, always beautiful but never in great numbers at Bempton compared to the other seabirds bill-rubbed with their partners on their chosen ledges. Stiff-winged Fulmars breezed by- the air was full of seabirds, the white cruciforms of Gannets, the whirring wings of Puffins, and Herring Gulls, patrolling as if looking for trouble, and elegant Kittywakes. A single Common Seal was below in the water, looking up at the birds.

Gannet with chick, with Guillemot arguing with a fish behind. 

Kittywake in the sunshine.

We returned to the visitors' centre, and enjoyed a cup of coffee, something of a novelty after all these months, and found ourselves surrounded by confiding blue-eyed Jackdaws and chattering Tree Sparrows, perhaps hoping for a crumb or two of RSPB visitor centre cake. We also watched tree sparrows dust-bathing in the dry sandy soil. After our sustenance, we were treated to the graceful sight of a Barn Owl, perched on a post, then taking to the wing to seize an unfortunate rodent in the grass.

Tree Sparrows

In the sunny spells, butterflies were on the wing in the clifftop meadows. In the yellow glow of the early evening sun, two juvenile Peregrines perched upon posts. I avoided approaching too close, and enjoyed watching these two powerful predators, and was surprised when these laid-back youngsters did not flinch at oncoming walkers. The adult female flew by, and some minutes later we saw the adult male perched on a clifftop.

Gannet in flight

We turned our backs reluctantly on the seabirds, as the evening was approaching, and made our way back to the car park. Taking a last scan around, and watching some Linnets, Natty found a bird perched in a commanding position on top of a small Hawthorne bush, and identified it as a Red Backed Shrike, a scarce migrant, a life tick for Natty and only my second in the UK. The bird appeared to be an adult female, presumably a returning migrant, and sat with the deceptively cute look of the smaller shrikes, not betraying its nature as a powerful little predator of small mammals and even small birds.

Red Backed Shrike

Nearby a Yellowhammer sang from the top of a post. 

We made our way home, having enjoyed a wonderful day at Bempton, one of my favourite places, and our only day trippable seabird city. I hope we can return in 2021. 

Birds Seen: Fulmar, Gannet, Moorhen, Oystercatcher, Kittywake, Lesser Black Backed Gull, Herring Gull, Guillemot, Razorbill, Puffin*, Feral Pigeon, Woodpigeon, Barn Owl, Kestrel, Peregrine, Red Backed Shrike*, Magpie, Jackdaw, Carrion Crow, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Skylark, Swallow, Whitethroat, Blackbird, Song Thrush, Stonechat, Tree Sparrow, Meadow Pipit, Chaffinch, Linnet, Goldfinch, Yellowhammer*, Reed Bunting

Butterflies: Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell, Meadow Brown, White spp. 

Mammals: Rabbit, Common Seal (Harbour Seal)

Razorbill, chattering.

RSPB Hodbarrow, or The Start of the Northern Summer

I want to blog about the buzzards, I really want to, but nothing but incoherent rage can come out of my mouth on the subject at the moment. Indeed, I cannot talk about it without incitement so I’m not going to. Instead I am going to tell you about all the trips I managed to squeeze in, between the GIS coursework, in  the last few days, the days summer arrived in Lancashire! Instead of raging against English (anti) Nature, and the game industry to whom they are in thrall, I am going to tell you all what a nice week I have had.  There will be more to come, think of this as “part one.”

Sunday took Natty and I to the RSPB and National Nature Reserve at Hodbarrow, on the West coast of Cumbria, near Millom, where apparently there is an ex RAF airfield and possibly a prison. It is also home to a large coastal lagoon where a colony of very special, on a UK level at least, Terns live. No sooner had we left the car park, and overcome the disappointment that for some reason dogs were permitted on the reserve, we were surrounded by the sound of birdsong. We could hear the scratchy melodies of Whitethroat, the full-on techno beats of Sedge Warbler, the tumbling melodies of willow warbler, and the repetitious, two-note song of Chiffchaff, the melody with flourish at the end of Chaffinch. A pair of blackcaps hopped about in an oak tree. The paths were lined with yellow flowering Gorse.  There were a few white butterflies about.

Rounding a corner, passing a pond attended by the obligatory pair of Mute Swans and large numbers of Swallows and Sand Martins, Natalie, ever the sharp-eyed entomologist, found me the season’s first Damselfly, sunning itself on a blade of grass. By the season and the red colour, it was probably a Pyrrhosoma nymphula, A large Red Damselfly. A couple of fresher damselflies were about, still to develop their adult markings.  The trees had only just entered full leaf, and one or two were still sparse. To see the first Damselfly of the year was a relief. The snow in Bowland and down into the Peaks at Easter is still a recent memory, as was Roeburndale in late April, sliding about in the pouring rain, and noticing the bluebells were still underground. We walked on and found a small cove. A few crab skins lay about on the beach. Out on the water we could see some Red Breasted Merganser, and a few Eider and Shelduck. Redshank and crows foraged in the mud. We were out of Morecambe Bay by now, having driven through the South Western corner of the Lake District National Park. Across the river Duddon the fells of South Lakeland stood out above the estuary mud.

We were crossing a small headland when we saw a bird of prey being mobbed, fairly relentlessly, by gulls. It drew toward us over the estuary. There is nothing unusual about seeing a buzzard or some such crossing a small strip of water, or getting mobbed by gulls, but raising my binoculars, this was no buzzard. Its long wings arched slightly like a gulls’, and its body was white, a dark stripe running through its eye. This was an Osprey! We couldn’t see a tag or a ring, and shortly the gulls had seen it off, back over the Duddon Estuary. To my mind this seemed too late to be a passage migrant, the internet reports the Rutland Water Ospreys already have chicks, it may have been one of the adults now nesting in the Lake District.

We had lunch on the beach and dipped our toes in the still freezing water. A few Sandwich and Common Terns flew by, some diving for fish, and some skimming the water surface. Hodbarrow is one of the few places little terns can be seen in the UK. They breed on islands left behind by abandoned Iron workings on the site. The industrial history of the Hodbarrow reserve is rich, and plain to see, the muddy soil stained red by haematite, old quarries scarring the landscape and the odd fragment of a concrete structure protruding among the rushes. We walked the sea wall to the hide were we were entertained by the pretty Little Terns, sweet looking little birds with black caps, yellow bills and short forked tails. They were feisty, defending their nest site against anything, mobbing even larger terns as they passed by. They had arrived only a few days ago, but now there seemed to be as many as forty of them, nest scrapes already established on the bare bars of stone in the lagoon, presumably stacks of spoil from some quarrying operation. Despite their aggression little terns are infamously vulnerable to predators. Here, electric fences, and broken fences, were all over the islands, presumably from attemptos to protect these nationally rare (but globally distributed) birds.  I have seen Little Tern before, but only when I was volunteering in Gialova in Greece, in a place which bore odd similarities to Hodbarrow.  A few Eider swam in the still water, one of the males very vocal, tipping his head back and making the classic Eider call, perhaps best described as an impression of Kenneth Williams. The smart sea ducks dabbled about for a while. Great crested grebes swam around, paired up, no longer dancing as the summer is now in full swing, but not yet with the little chicks on their backs, as will I have no doubt charm us in the months to come.

We ended the day with a spot of sea watching, in the distance, Gannets and Kittywakes could be seen diving for fish in the open water among flocks of terns and black headed gulls. Gulls and Eider, and a few Red Breasted Merganser bobbed on the surface. The falling temperature and building wind coming in off the sea reminded us of our latitude, but among the birds, the swifts and swallows flying all around us on the walk back to the car park, we could be in no doubt that the summer had begun.

Arctic Waders and Icicles at Heysham Head.

If our proximity to the sea has denied me the pleasure of walking in the snow here in Lancaster, I thought, after throwing my Wildlife Monitoring Techniques “The Bird Survey” and “The Insect Survey” into the drop box at the University, the culmination of months of fairly to moderately hard work and procrastination, I may as well go for a walk  by the sea. 

Song Thrush at Heysham.

I drove to the prettier end of Heysham, the Port Town  Morecambe, and parked up outside the Half Moon Beach Cafe, the one with the disconcerting flags, and stood where the road turns to approach the port, and the two imposing structures which are the two nuclear power stations. Heysham itself remains in the running for a third, but it would, it seems, take a lot of destruction to squeeze in such a building on this site, where archaeological remains, caravan sites, an active port and huge flocks of wading birds are already pressed together.   I do not know which other Northern sites are in the running for the dubious honour, and nuclear seems like a grubby compromise, with the emphasis on the grubby, for the future of energy, but Heysham doesn’t need it.

View of Heysham Power Stations.

A song thrush hopped about and posed for a couple of photos on the bank near the fence, and a cluster of Knot huddled together against the biting cold.  The grey winter plumage of the Knot, Red Knot in acknowledgement of their rust coloured breeding plumage, and their hunched posture against the wind, just seems fitting on such an icy day. Appropriately too, these birds breed in the arctic. Even their scientific name, Caladris canutus, invoking the Norse king Knut, speaks of wintry coastlines and the power of the tide which governs their lives. .  The breeze was not strong  but it was bitter. Smaller Turnstones had a different strategy, busily gathering food, picking about among the pebbles. A flock of finches flew in from over the two imposing cuboid power stations. I got breifly excited, scanning their number for some of the elusive passerines, Snow Buntings and Twite, which sometimes use this coast when the cold weather forces them off their more normal, upland habitats. They can deal with the rocky substrate. The birds turned out to be greenfinches, and they foraged in the bushes. I walked down the beach. The water flowing out of the red soil had formed large icicles, like vitreous stalactites,  which hung from the subtle overhangs of the eroding sections at the top of the beach, as if just to underline the fact it was cold.

Icicles.

A flock of noisy, piping little birds flew in low over the waves.   My binoculars revealed them to be Ringed Plovers, with bold black masks on their faces and dark collards. These smart, and inevitably cute little birds looked hardly resilient to the cold, but they joined the foraging turnstones in frenetic activity on the beach. I walked up onto Heysham Head, the green promontory of land with National Trust signs on it. Wrens hissed angrily in the bushes, there were several of these feisty little birds of the scrub around.  How tiny bodied birds cope with the ice is a constant source of wonder, but they do.

I kept my eye on the rocks below. A couple of curlews sat with their heads and long beaks under their wings, with turnstones at their feet, and a ringed plover wandering about. One looked up, irritated by the small birds, and eventually took off over the waves. I scanned the surface of the sea, hoping for some interesting sea birds seeking the shelter of Morecambe bay, or better still a dark dorsal fin rising out of the water. I saw no fin, but a little crowd of Oystercatchers, black with white bands on their wings, which flew around the headland and settled somewhere out of sight.  Distant gulls were Common Gulls, far from the commonest of gulls, but winter visitors to most of England and largely breeding birds of further North than this, marked out by the big white mirrors in their black-tipped primaries.  A brown bird over the water turned out to be one of the sleepy curlews, perhaps irritated into flight by busy Turnstones.

Wakey Wakey!
Note the Ringed Plover at the bottom left. I knew he was there when I took the photo. Honest!

I walked up to the top, close to the chapel of St Patrick, a ruin which stands on the top of Heysham head, overlooking the town of Morecambe and its promenade, with its mysterious open stone graves, hewn into the rock, presumably the reason the head has been spared from industry and providing the interest of the National Trust.  By now the cold which numbed my fingers was creeping up my arms and I thought perhaps it was time to turn around. A dog, out for a walk with a few canine comrades and their master, put up a couple of Lapwings. I descended a little and saw the Oystercatchers on the rocks below me.  There must have been a couple of hundred, and they looked settled for the night, although more birds were flying in to join them. A duck caught my eye and closer inspection revealed it to be a fish-eating merganser type. She was a female with a brown head and grey flanks splashed with white. The brown of her head and grey of her body seemed to fade into each other, and the white patch beneath her beak was edged diffusely with brown feathers. The crest was thin, and looked like a Mohawk. I managed to take a couple of photos, blurry, distant record shots in the fading light, so I stand to be corrected, but I wrote down Red-Breasted Merganser, less common round here than the very similar, and currently range-expanding Goosander.  It dived frequently, as did the few cormorants which also sat on top of the waves.

Female Red Breasted Merganser

As I walked down the path toward the car park, joined by increasing numbers of dogs and dog walkers, signalling the end of the working day, I made my way back down the head toward the car park, and the welcome opportunity to warm up after a day by the coast.  Twite and Snow bunting less, but nonetheless having enjoyed the opportunity to do a bit of coastal birding and  newfound, and temporary freedom from impending essay deadlines.

Oystercatchers

Bird List for Heysham head, 18^th January 2012: (International Common names/Authors preference)

Song Thrush (Turdus philomelos) Red Knot (Caladris canutus) Turnstone (Arenaria interpres) Common Redshank (Tringa totanus) Greenfinch (Carduelis chloris) Northern Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus) Greater Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) Oystercatcher (Haematopus haematopus) Common Gull (Larus canus) Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) Black Headed Gull (Croicocephalus ridibundus) Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) Carrion Crow (Corvus corone) Ringed Plover (Charadrius hiaticula) Red Breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator) Blackbird (Turdus merula)