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Time to take stock of the year – the Crail year list starts anew tomorrow. I hoped this year to beat my record of 157 and ideally reach 160. I saw 161 species this year, so I’m very pleased. The species list was as follows:

Great Spotted Woodpecker – no. 72

Gannet – an annual crowd pleaser and no. 38

Northern Wheatear – no. 106

Long-tailed Skua – no. 144

Brunnich’s Guilemmot – no. 153 and one of the stars of the year

Pink-footed Goose – no. 89

Arctic tern – no. 121

Golden plover – no. 61

Knot – no. 135

1	Herring Gull	01/01/2016
2	Blackbird
3	Carrion Crow
4	Tree Sparrow
5	Dunnock
6	Wren
7	Reed Bunting
8	Curlew
9	Grey Heron
10	Eider
11	Cormorant
12	Shag
13	Common Starling
14	Common Buzzard
15	Redshank
16	Black-headed Gull
17	Common Pheasant
18	Goldfinch
19	Goldeneye
20	Turnstone
21	Oystercatcher
22	Wigeon
23	Robin
24	Yellowhammer
25	Water Rail
26	Mallard	Sunrise
27	Moorhen
28	Common Gull
29	Great Black-backed Gull
30	Song Thrush
31	Chaffinch
32	Blue Tit
33	Woodpigeon
34	Teal
35	Red-breasted Merganser
36	Meadow Pipit
37	Kittiwake
38	Gannet
39	Red-throated Diver	09:00
40	Long-tailed Duck
41	Stock Dove
42	Greenfinch
43	Skylark
44	Rook
45	Great Tit
46	Jackdaw
47	Goldcrest
48	Mistle Thrush
49	Long-tailed Tit	10:00
50	Treecreeper
51	Dipper
52	Corn Bunting
53	House Sparrow
54	Bullfinch
55	Stonechat
56	Guillemot
57	Rock Pipit
58	Purple Sandpiper
59	Razorbill
60	Little Auk
61	Golden Plover	11:00
62	Kestrel
63	Fieldfare
64	Redwing
65	Coal Tit
66	Linnet
67	Whooper Swan
68	Mute Swan
69	Coot
70	Tufted Duck
71	Little Grebe
72	Great Spotted Woodpecker	12:00
73	Magpie
74	Feral Pigeon
75	Sparrowhawk	13:00
76	Lapwing
77	Collared Dove
78	Perergrine
79	Merlin	14:00
80	Fulmar	02/01/2016
81	Ringed Plover
82	Sanderling
83	Grey Wagtail
84	Grey Plover
85	Lesser Black-backed Gull	06/01/2016
86	Pied Wagtail	08/01/2016
87	Bar-tailed Godwit	09/01/2016
88	Dunlin
89	Pink-footed Goose
90	Great Northern Diver
91	Black Guillemot
92	Grey Phalarope
93	Woodcock	10/01/2016
94	Common Scoter
95	Slavonian Grebe
96	Tawny Owl	13/01/2016
97	Grey Partridge	15/01/2016
98	Bean Goose (Taiga)	17/01/2016
99	Greylag Goose	31/01/2016
100	Common Snipe	28/02/2016
101	Pintail	05/03/2016
102	Great Crested Grebe	06/03/2016
103	Sisikin	12/03/2016
104	Puffin	27/03/2016
105	Sandwich Tern	02/04/2016
106	Northern Wheatear	03/04/2016
107	Shelduck
108	Chiff-chaff
109	Blackcap
110	Black Redstart	06/04/2016
111	Barn Swallow	07/04/2016
112	Velvet Scoter	08/04/2016
113	Sand Martin	10/04/2016
114	Common Redstart	13/04/2016
115	Goosander	15/04/2016
116	Hawfinch	16/04/2016
117	Willow Warbler	30/04/2016
118	House Martin
119	Whimbrel
120	Common Swift	01/05/2016
121	Arctic Tern	02/05/2016
122	Common Whitethroat
123	Manx Shearwater
124	Storm Petrel
125	Sedge Warbler	06/05/2016
126	Yellow Wagtail
127	Marsh Warbler	11/05/2016
128	Common Tern	14/05/2016
129	Garden Warbler	27/05/2016
130	Canada Goose	06/06/2016
131	Marsh Harrier	13/06/2016
132	Little Stint	05/08/2016
133	Whinchat	06/08/2016
134	Common Sandpiper
135	Knot	12/08/2016
136	Lesser Whitethroat	20/08/2016
137	Greenish Warbler
138	Curlew Sandpiper
139	Black-tailed Godwit
140	Pied Flycatcher	21/08/2016
141	Mediterranean Gull	22/08/2016
142	Gadwall	27/08/2016
143	Sooty Shearwater
144	Long-tailed Skua
145	Arctic Skua
146	Greenshank	28/08/2016
147	Great Skua
148	Tree pipit	04/09/2016
149	Little Gull	10/09/2016
150	Black-throated Diver
151	Redpoll	18/09/2016
152	Spotted Flycatcher	20/09/2016
153	Brunnichs Guillemot	25/09/2016
154	Lapland Bunting	02/10/2016
155	Yellow-browed Warbler
156	Red-flanked Bluetail	05/10/2016
157	Barnacle Goose	06/10/2016
158	Brambling	08/10/2016
159	Snow Bunting	30/10/2016
160	Pomarine Skua	06/11/2016
161	Jack Snipe	29/12/2016

On behalf of John Anderson and myself (Will Cresswell) – thank you for reading this year; Happy New Year and here’s to another year of good birding and wildlife around Crail. I’m hoping to beat the New Year’s day record of 79 tomorrow…

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Purple sandpiper

Another nice day today, cold enough to feel a bit wintry but with the westerly wind not too strong to make it uncomfortable. Still relatively mild though and I watched a steady and unseasonal stream of gannets past Fife Ness this morning. There were a couple of red-throated divers and a few guillemots at sea and the usual small flock of purple sandpipers amongst the breaking waves on the rocks.

This afternoon I cycled up the B940, north-west from Crail to look for anything in the fields. There is a nice stubble field at Damside which has a lot of starlings, house sparrows, chaffinches, greenfinches, yellowhammers and reed buntings in it and a flock of about 15 tree sparrows. Further up at Muirhead there is a fallow field edge, probably being left for game cover, that is also full of birds – goldfinches, grey partridges, pheasants, skylark and a lot of reed buntings. I tramped around a boggy bit just off the road at Hilleraye and flushed 5 common snipe and with a bit of persistence a single jack snipe – number 161 for the record breaking Crail year list. They are much, much harder to flush and fly off silently making them much trickier to find. They also look a lot like snipe when they fly– the longer bill of a common snipe is foreshortened as they fly away from you so its shorter bill is not much use as a feature. I find the much more prominent golden stripes on the back the best feature along with their smaller size, as long as you see them as they flush close to you. Jack snipe are also supposed to only fly a short distance and not to gain much height – this is not a great feature. Common snipe do usually fly off to a large distance and to go quite high quickly, but jack snipe can do this as well. Inspired by this I tramped a few more wet places and in a near pond in a brassica field at Lochton I flushed another common snipe and then a second jack snipe. This one truer to character flew low and landed in the field close by, running into cover for a bit before freezing. If they stay frozen they are fantastically well camouflaged and I will have walked past many more jack snipe around Crail this year than I found today. Still, now on the year list and better late than never. Two days more to get a barn owl…

Jack snipe – no. 161 for the Crail Year List

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I usually try to keep Wild Crail relevant to Crail – my limit is 10 km from the centre of Crail. And most of my local birding is confined there because everything is much more special when you find it on your local patch. But it’s Christmas and a little bit of twitching abroad seems in order. There have been lots of shore larks turning up this year with some spectacularly large flocks turning up on the Norfolk and Lothian coast. I have been keeping my eye out along the shore and golf courses at Fife Ness but shore larks really like very open areas of saltmarsh and mud rather than rocky shores. Places like Tentsmuir, where I caught up with a pair of shore larks today. Shore larks are spectacularly tame and it was easy to locate this pair because they were 20 meters in front of several photographers lying down in the dunes at the edge of the saltmarsh area there. A lot of others were out twitching these shore larks today. Tentsmuir also hosted hundreds of walkers and dogs out on the beach and amongst the dunes today so it is a good thing that the shore larks really don’t care less.

Shore larks are high Arctic birds that never really encounter people and you have to get to within about 15 meters before they fly off – and they never fly very far when they do. I watched a few birders creeping in to get closer and others just strolling up – the shore larks oblivious either way. The main determinant of the approach strategy was how many other birders were there already. When you are in a crowd at a twitch you have to behave very cautiously because nothing is worse than being the person who has scared off the bird that everyone has come to see (it can be dangerous if the bird is very rare…). If you have the bird to yourself most people try and get close, and more often than not, the rarity doesn’t bother much. And if it is a shore lark, it is a sure thing anyway. This then manifests itself in really big twitches as the larger the crowd, the greater the distance from the bird (which makes sense) – but as time goes on the crowd gets closer in a very slow game of Grandmother’s footsteps. Sometimes the rare bird can end up literally at people’s feet, with photographers frustrated that their long lenses are just too long.

Shore larks are very distinctive with a handsome black bandit mask and a yellow throat and eye stripe. One of these days they will turn up in the Crail patch – probably in front of someone playing golf at Balcomie or Kingsbarns, refusing to move even as the golf balls rain down on them. Please study the picture below if that is likely to be you and please let me know when you see one!

Shore lark – this one currently at Tyninghame over on the other side of the Forth, but much as one of the pair at Tentsmuir today

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Today was one of the warmest Christmas days I remember. Over twelve degrees for most of the day. The gales were back with some very strong gusts late morning. I was watching the Saucehope flock of golden plover swirling in the wind over the ploughed field next to Pinkerton, wondering at their apparently unnecessary precision acrobatics when I saw a larger bird amongst them. It was flying like a thrush with flickering wingbeats and then short glides with its wing closed. A male peregrine disguising its usual flight to get amongst the flock. I have seen merlins do this type of flight often – like a mistle thrush – but peregrines hardly ever do it. They are just too big to fool anything that they are anything other than a bird of prey with bad intent. The golden plover flock divided and streamed around the peregrine as it banked back and attacked again. No luck for the raptor. Despite its disguising flight I don’t think it ever had the element of surprise and a golden plover can fly as fast and much more agilely than a peregrine. I watched it resume a more obvious raptor like flight and head off towards Wormiston to find another flock that was a bit easier to surprise.

Peregrine

The theme was repeated about ten minutes later on the beach at Roome Bay. I was just lamenting having put up the redshanks on the strandline when a female sparrowhawk appeared, stooping down the cliff scattering the rock pipits and pied wagtails, but missing the already departing redshanks by seconds. I may have spoiled that particular sparrowhawk’s Christmas dinner. But like the peregrine it headed straight off to set up another attack and I quickly lost it, diving into one of gardens in Pinkerton.

Sparrowhawk – if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

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The gales and rain showers eased this afternoon and I walked through Cambo and along Kingsbarn’s beach in bright sunshine. Deserted of people but not of birds. I enjoyed the ducks: wigeon and mallard at the mouth of the burn and then goldeneyes and long-tailed ducks on the sea. It was close to high tide and the wrack line was covered with feeding redshanks and turnstones. There was a pair of stonechat just at the south-east end of the beach, foraging on the rocks but using the gabions as a perch to retreat to. On my return a flock of pink-footed geese flew past out at sea heading towards Fife Ness and the Lothians beyond with the still strong wind behind them. A good Christmassy sight to finish with.

Pink-footed geese

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With the gales and rough seas of today I was expecting some passage at sea. But there were only the usual herring and great black-backed gulls and shags passing and a single gannet. The west coast is getting the seabirds today I think.

Herring Gull

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There was a lively crowd on Balcomie Beach today. A pair of red-breasted merganser fishing among the rocks, about 20 sanderling with 10 each of ringed plover, dunlin, redshank and oystercatcher at the water’s edge and then turnstones, lots of meadow pipits and the usual rock pipits along the strandline. With a final backdrop of a couple of stonechats on the grass stems at the beach edge. Further along at Fife Ness I could see huge clouds of seabirds tailing a large fishing boat on the horizon – frustratingly 5km too far out to make them out. I consoled myself with a couple of bottle-nosed dolphin chasing fish much closer in, although when they are feeding they barely come up at all and not in the regular predictable way that a pod travelling past does.

Male stonechat

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Last night the moon rise at about 17:00 was spectacular. A so called “super moon” – when the moon is at its closest to us – and so looks much larger. A huge, orangey-red ball, more like the setting sun, and later noticeably much brighter than a normal full moon. A light cloud at about 23:00 made its brightness into a diffuse light that made everything visible. I should have gone out looking for barn owls!

Not a super moon – but a lovely photo of one of the Christmasy robins that are on the shore at the moment

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There is a flock of whooper swan in residence in a stubble field by the side of the road between Dunino and Kenly, at Bonnytown Farm. I counted 28 today, feeding peacefully mid-afternoon, although it was already dusk. I stopped the car right beside them and was able to watch these wild birds, like a herd of small dinosaurs from only 30 meters away. They watched me warily at first but soon relaxed back into their quiet, steady grazing, interspersed with an occasional muted trumpeting call. Like the curlews of last week I was minded of how nervous swans can be when they are hunted. Most of the whooper swans that come to us breed in Iceland and fly directly to us for the winter, without fear of being shot at, at either end. The Bewick’s swans that come to the UK from Siberia, however, have to run the gauntlet of rogue shooters all the way across Russia and Eastern Europe. Many have non-lethal amounts of lead shot in them to testify this. They are much warier and I would never get so close to such a relaxed flock as the whoopers today.

Whooper swan

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There is newly ploughed field directly between Crail and Wormiston that was full of skylarks on Saturday. As I went along the footpath below it, the larks kept on popping up with their soft, rippling calls until the sky was full of them. It always amazes me how many larks can hide in a field. You have no idea until they take flight. One of the larks flying up gave a distinctly different call – a soft rattle followed by a “chew” – a snow bunting. It was a juvenile so barely showing any conspicuous white on it; without the call it would have been lost in the flock. I suspect I often overlook snow buntings around Crail in the winter.

Snow bunting

Most of the skylarks and the snow bunting had moved on today. But I found a load more skylarks in the stubble fields of the airfield. One singing frantically high in the distance caught my attention and sure enough, it was being chased by a female merlin. I watched the merlin stooping on the climbing and diving lark for about a minute before the lark dived straight down into a pile of rubble at the side of the airfield where it presumably found a crevice to hide in. The merlin just missed it as the skylark reached cover and it glided off to the middle of the airfield to perch on the ground, itself disappearing the moment it stopped flying. Merlins sit for hours immobile and ignored before an unlucky lark or pipit draws its attention by flying up. My crossing of the stubble field probably put up the lark that was targeted in the hunt I saw, my passage revealing both the cryptic prey and then the cryptic predator. Merlins sometime follow people or vehicles to take advantage of disturbed potential prey flying up in front of them, but then there are also accounts of skylarks (literally) flying up people’s trouser legs as the only available cover to elude a merlin.

Down at Roome Bay at lunchtime it was a nice high tide. Most of the Crail redshanks (I counted 37) were in the corner below the cliff on the drifts of wrack, picking up the displaced sandhoppers and seaweed fly maggots as the waves crashed into the seaweed piles. They were joined by the usual suspects of mallards and black-headed gulls applying themselves from the sea side of the equation. These high tide feeding frenzies are one of Crail’s wildlife spectacles. Lots of other, rarer, species join in but it is the sheer number and busyness of everything against the backdrop of the crashing waves, that everything has to dodge, that makes it worth looking at.

There are a couple of pairs of wigeon always down at the mouth of the Brandyburn amongst the mallards. Look out for the orange heads of the males and big white wing patches when they fly.

Male wigeon down at the mouth of the Brandyburn

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There are a few sparrowhawks about town at the moment. They flit like wraiths between gardens, silent and lethal unless a blue tit gets sight of it and calls to spread the alarm. It is always worthwhile for something like a blue tit or robin to give an alarm call when they see a sparrowhawk because even if it draws attention to them, it will more likely spoil the hawk’s element of surprise. The hawk will likely then leave the area unsuccessful and best of all be less likely to return another day. A successful hawk will be back tomorrow to try its luck again so it is in every small bird’s interest to make its hunting as hard as possible. John Anderson has a sparrowhawk as a regular visitor to his garden where it is often successful with the smaller birds attracted to his feeder. The best defence against this is placing any bird feeder close to a dense bush so that birds can retreat into cover when attacked. John has done this already but his sparrowhawk is very persistent and will attempt to fish out anything sheltering in the beech hedge. If the sheltering birds keep their nerve they are usually OK but it must be a terrifying experience.

John Anderson’s regular sparrowhawk trying its luck at fishing sheltering birds out of the protection of a beech hedge next to his bird feeder

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A walk along the shore at this time of year will always flush a wren or two slinking among the rocks more like a mouse than a bird. In frosty weather the shore can provide an unfrozen bonanza for a small bird. Garden birds like wrens, as well as dunnocks, robins, blackbirds and even greenfinches will head down to the strandline in harder weather to join the rock pipits. The sparrowhawks follow them though…

Wren – creeping around the rocks of the shore like a mouse

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I headed up to Carnbee Reservoir this morning in search of smew. There have been a few of the eastern European ducks turning up in Fife this week, fleeing colder weather in central Europe. They are small charismatic mergansers and the males particularly are very handsome black and white birds (nicknamed “nuns”). We mostly get females or juveniles that are known as redheads – not quite as striking as the adult males but like waxwings, they only turn up every few winters and often unexpectedly in small or urban ponds and lakes. All this preamble ought to lead to a triumphant account of no. 161 on the year list and a new bird for my overall Crail list but sadly not. A fine array of ducks – tufted ducks, teal, mallard, wigeon, goldeneye and teal – both mute and whooper swans, and a moorhen, but no smew sadly. Still if you don’t look…There were also, and more strangely, no coots. Perhaps the recent cold weather moved them further west. The view over the Forth was worth the trip up in any case. The horizons of the Forth islands, the Lothians and finally the Lammermuirs each silhouetted by the low sun, but fading into each other as the morning mist burnt off.

I headed down to Anstruther and walked along the coast from Cellardyke for a while. The old pig field is now a lovely weedy stubble, at one end full of mallards and wigeons; the female pintail was with them again, here for another winter. At the other end was a large flock of linnets (no twite) and with them at least four corn buntings, and maybe many more. A couple of the corn buntings were even singing – a strange sound to hear in December. Further on there was an impressive flock of several hundred starlings among the cows.

A female pintail – there is one among the wigeons and mallards at Kilrenny Mill, Cellardyke again this winter

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There were two curlew feeding for most of the afternoon in Beech Walk Park. Curlews often feed in grassy areas and in open fields away from the shore but like to have a bit of space around them. It was unusual to see a pair feeding so happily close to the trees and houses around the park. They walked away from people crossing the park and only made the briefest of flights away from any dog that approached them. I was reminded of how wary curlews used to be. When I started bird watching most curlews had been shot at, at some time during their lives – curlews were still on the quarry list for hunters right up until 1981when the Wildlife and Countryside Act of that year put in place a lot of the species protection that we take for granted as common sense today. Curlews live a long time and even at the end of the’80s there were many curlew about that would take flight hundreds of meters away from an approaching person. The widlfowlers who waxed lyrical at the time about the loss of their wonderful sport of outwitting curlews on lonely mudflats perhaps didn’t realise that their sport was at the expense of all of us. They might have shot just a relative handful, but they trained every curlew in Britain to shun humans. Now we can all admire these wonderful birds close up, making many of us happy rather than just a few, and quite a lot of curlews too I should think.

A curlew feeding happily on a piece of grassland

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A whinchat in Nigeria

It’s always hard for me to get back into Wild Crail after my usual November stint in central Nigeria. Just as winter closes in here I spend some time where it is hot and full of summer birds. A walk around the research institute I help run in Jos before breakfast brings an easy 80 species, including summer migrants like willow warbler, pied flycatcher, wryneck, wood warbler, common redstart, tree pipit, yellow wagtail, whinchat, house martin, northern wheatear, common nightingale, hoopoe, wryneck and melodious warbler. Most of these I see in Crail regularly or might hope to see as rare passage birds, and many I have seen this year. I love the similarity of an August whinchat in a piece of scrub next to Troustie House with one in a structurally identical piece of scrub in a field corner in Nigeria in November, and I love the difference of a lone pied flycatcher circuiting around the trees at Kilminning with a flock of them amongst African gallery forest birds like yellow-breasted apalis and oriole warblers.

I was chasing whinchats again in the mornings and then looking at some of the date we collected from the loggers we put on them during the hotter parts of the day. Every migratory track we download and I look at it is an amazing little story of epic achievement. One whinchat, for example, went from central Nigeria to Moscow – a distance of 6,000 kilometers – in just 11 days. This works out at 12 hours flying every night at 45 km/h – which is the speed small birds like whinchats fly when put in a wind tunnel – followed by a day of rest and feeding up. This whinchat must know a route across the desert with regular oases and a route across the Mediterranean with islands on the way. One of the questions I can ask from such data is whether this bird is an adult with lots of experience to allow such an efficient migration: other birds take much longer, or cross the Sahara in a single uninterrupted flight of 2-3 days, and this might reflect a more risky strategy based on inexperience. Any very long flight requires lots of fat to fuel it and so a long period of recovery afterwards. This relies on good sites being reached in Tunisia or Algeria after crossing the desert, with little margin of error. Such migration strategy choices make all the difference to whether a bird makes it or not.

Curlew – they may still be common but they are one of our best Crail birds

But back to Crail and less than 8 hours’ daylight and the relatively low mid-winter diversity of the temperate north. On Wednesday, the first day I have been out in Crail for a few weeks, the first thing I I noticed was the gannets have gone for the winter. Nice to see lots of gulls though – not an African thing – and nice to see 38 mallards in Roome Bay after a duckless week or two. There was a conspicuous great-spotted woodpecker in Denburn Wood and a bright and flashy grey wagtail down at the mouth of the burn itself. There are still some stubble fields about and the one behind Pinkerton had some skylarks and a single corn bunting. At Saucehope a large flock of lapwings was roosting on the rocky shore. And don’t forget the other  shorebirds there: turnstone, sanderling and curlew that are our winter migrants to make up for the absent warblers and flycatchers.  So some nice birds to come home to and always the promise of the waxwings that must materialise in Crail any day soon.

Our winter specials – sanderling and turnstone