I was paced by a huge flock of woodpigeons as I travelled into St Andrews this morning. They were going a little slower than the car I was in. We joined them at Fairmount and we were still passing them as we got to St Andrews. The flock of well over 1000 then began overtaking us and then it was woodpigeons all the way to Strathkinness. There are some 70 million woodpigeons in the world and they may be a pest but they make a good show when they get together.
Woodpigeons
There have been some good high tide gatherings this weekend. At Balcomie on the midday high tide on Saturday there were a couple of hundred black-headed, common and herring gulls picking for seaweed fly maggots on the tide line, with the same number of redshank, turnstone, starlings and purple sandpiper doing the same a few meters away on the strand line piles of seaweed. They would all fly up every thirty seconds or so as a particularly big wave washed in before reassorting back into their wet and “dry” zones. It made for the usual exciting spectacle of birds constantly in motion and having to check and recheck them just in case there was something more unusual among them. John had a Mediterranean gull with the black-headed gulls yesterday, but it was not there today.
Left black-headed gull and right Mediterranean gull – at Balcomie on Friday. A great photo to show their differences as if they were posing for a field guide
If you have been around St Andrews first thing in the morning the last few days you will have noticed the large number of pink-footed geese heading out from the Eden estuary to feed in the East Neuk. Weeks with a full moon are always good for movements of geese as they can feed during the night. Pink-footed geese are doing well in the UK – almost all of the Greenland and Iceland population winter here. There are estimated to be about 360,000 pink-footed geese, up by 50% in the last ten years. It is good that some things are increasing, although two hundred years ago I suspect they would have been much more common.
Pink-footed geese – they are nocturnal on nights with good moonlight
I had another flock of about 15 corn buntings at Kingsbarns today, in the stubble field directly alongside the road to the beach. This year there was a really high density of singing males as you headed north along the coast from there. There may have been as many as 7 territories. And they seem to be hanging around them this winter as do the local Crail birds.
There has been a hen harrier reported hunting behind Crail for the last couple of days, particularly in the rough grass fallow field behind Bow Butts and Denburn. Look out for a thinner winged buzzard with a long tail and a white rump. The hen harrier is the species which gets a very hard time because of illegal persecution on grouse moors. They should be regulars each winter round Crail but their population is much lower in Scotland than it should be and we haven’t had a hen harrier around for a couple of years. The field behind Denburn is great at the moment with a lot of tall dead grass in it making it a good habitat for voles which harriers love. I didn’t see it myself today when I went out looking – but did enjoy a sparrowhawk, a kestrel and a couple of buzzards enjoying the “harrier” field and adjacent stubble fields. I also put up lots of skylarks and a flock of 17 corn bunting from the stubble north of Saucehope between the airfield and Pinkerton. Walking through a winter stubble field is a joy and they are great habitats for birds – I hope a few stay unploughed through the winter.
Female hen harrier similar to the one around Crail at the moment
The sea has been really rough the last couple of days – it settled down a bit today but yesterday the waves were meters high crashing into Crail on the south easterly wind. The nearly full moon last night added to the drama, with lots of pink-footed geese passing over to feed in the moonlit fields between Crail and St Andrews.
A shag and the rough sea yesterday – you can see the colour ring on this bird showing it is a May Island breeder
A map of all the sightings of JP08 – winter in blue, spring and autumn black, and red summer (one where it was born and the other where it now breeds)
I saw a couple of colour-ringed black-headed gulls among the roost on the rocks just below the entrance to the Saucehope Caravan Park (always a good place to check!) on the 4th of November. I googled the colour-ring register – there are pages of schemes for individuals ringing gulls throughout Europe. Each has their own “scheme identifier” – a particular colour of ring or a particular sequence of numbers. Gull rings can be larger and so many have alpha-numeric codes as you can see from the photo. They are a bit trickier to read but with a photo through a telescope you can be very sure you haven’t made a mistake. I found the two schemes within a few minutes: the yellow ring bird comes from a scheme in Aberdeen, so I assume the bird was ringed there and the green ringed bird from Norway. I emailed both schemes and heard back from the Norwegian Natural History Museum a couple of days ago. JP08 was ringed as a chick on the 15th June 2014 near Oslo; it winters with us at Crail and Kilminning, having been seen twice in 2017 and now by me this year, and it breeds near Oslo, about 17 km from where it was born, and 880 km from Crail as the gull flies. The longevity record for a black-headed gull is over 30 years so watch out for this Crail winter resident over the next few years. Like most migrant birds, it is very likely to stay faithful to its winter and breeding site for the rest of its life.
The colour-ringed black-headed gulls at Saucehope on November 4th
I was out around Crail yesterday and Fife Ness and Balcomie this morning. A relatively quiet weekend but there are always memorable moments. In Denburn yesterday afternoon I was watching the now resident long-tailed tit flock moving noisily through the canopy when a blue tit with them gave a frantic alarm call and they all dived into cover, down to the still leafy bushes below the trees. Seconds later a male sparrowhawk passed through, zig-zagging through the upper branches, too late to catch anything. It was gone just as quickly as it appeared and within half a minute the tit flock was reinstated, noisy and bustling again. I watched grey wagtails along the stream in Denburn and further down at its mouth in Roome Bay, enjoying their bright flash of yellow as an inoculation against the dull grey of the weather this weekend. I flushed a couple of woodcock at Fife Ness – they disturbed the stillness of an almost empty Patch. Sea watching was all the usual winter wildfowl – long-tailed ducks, common scoters, eiders and goldeneyes passing – but exciting because of the now easterly wind building up the waves. The red-breasted mergansers and the shags fishing the surf were having a hard time in the disturbed water. There were a couple of kittiwake flocks far out and as I watched one, trying to dream up sabine’s gulls from the juveniles among it, I picked up a skua chasing a kittiwake even further out. A herring gull then tried to join in the chase giving a good size comparison to clinch the identification as an arctic skua – this late it is almost more likely to be a pomarine skua. The only slightly unusual bird of the weekend was a redpoll on a gorse bush alongside Crail golf course. Being perched rather than the more usual flyover, I could identify it as a lesser redpoll, the British sub-species of redpoll (and formerly a species in its own right). Redpolls were split into several species but they are really only one, varying in size and the paleness of their plumage along an east-west and north-south gradient. But when paler Arctic birds jump down, or browner, larger continental birds jump across to join the British redpolls, then they can seem quite different. A really pale Arctic type redpoll is a thing of great beauty and well worth seeing even if it is not a full species, so I will keep checking for them.
Male red-breasted merganser
It was very mild and without any wind this morning. The sea was just a rolling light swell and relatively calm. I took a visitor out to Fife Ness first thing to see some gannets – they live in Paris and seabirds are in short supply. Unusually no gannets apart from a distant juvenile struggling past in the absence of wind. It is getting late in the season and gannets head off for their winter holiday in the Bay of Biscay about now for the next three months. The consolation was an extended pod of bottle-nosed dolphins passing by at about 100 meters giving great views. They were heading up the coast towards St Andrews bay in a long line, with some nearly leaping out of the water and others milling about as if fishing. They are always hard to count but at least 30 and probably 50 passed over ten minutes.
Bottle-nosed dolphin
I was scanning out to sea this morning at Fife Ness through my telescope, zoomed in at the horizon, when I picked up a female merlin chasing a skylark. They were high above the sea, the merlin tail chasing the skylark, catching it up and then missing it as the lark suddenly plummeted down. The merlin would dive after it, getting underneath and then the skylark would fly up again. I watched the series of stoops for about a minute, the merlin getting closer and closer to the skylark each ascent. Then they joined, the skylark just a dot, suddenly gone with only the merlin remaining visible. They had been moving out to sea during the chase and the merlin was barely identifiable now it was so far out. The merlin started a steady flight back in the direction of Balcomie. I watched it expecting it to pass close by when it regained land, but I hadn’t realised how far out it was. Five minutes later it was still nowhere near the shore – I had picked it up several kilometres out and it gone even further out during the chase. The energy expended during a merlin pursuit chase – especially when they chase skylarks – is legendary. Both species are endurance flyers. I have timed some chases as lasting more than 11 minutes and this chase must have covered at least five kilometres as the crow flies, never mind the tortuous flight paths during those 5 kilometers of chase and stoop. Then during the long flight back the merlin also had to twice accelerate and climb during its flight when it was chased first by a herring gull and then a common gull trying to unsuccessfully steal its prey. I can’t imagine that once it got back to shore and plucked the skylark that ended up in calorie surplus.
A female merlin at Fife Ness – this is carrying a meadow pipit I watched it catch last October, also well out to sea
The May Island is very busy at the moment with seal season – they are breeding now. The pups are very vulnerable to storms and high tides and often get washed off the beaches. I found one poor such victim at Pittenweem yesterday.
A grey seal pup – now dead after being washed off the beach on the May and ending up at Pittenweem
There was a water pipit reported from the beach just west of Pittenweem yesterday afternoon. This would be a new bird for the Crail list so I went out this morning to look for it. I didn’t find it but it was good trip out because I hardly ever look at rock pipits properly and I had to check every single one between Pittenweem and St Monans to make sure I wasn’t overlooking the bird. Rock pipits used to be considered just a subspecies of water pipit so you can imagine they look very similar – and this is particularly so in the winter. I have seen a few winter water pipits and they usually stand out as greyer and whiter with cleaner, brighter patterning and neater streaking. But it can be tricky. Some of the rock pipits this morning looked promising in the bright early morning sunlight but none really survived a closer look through the telescope. One did have bright white outer tail feathers as it flew up but the joker in the pack was the occasional meadow pipit also on the beach – they also have white outer tail feathers. I suspect I missed it, but I’m better prepared to find my own water pipit out at Balcomie after this rock pipit master class.
Rock pipit
Meadow Pipit
As I stumped around the beach I heard a corn bunting singing from the field edge at the top of the cliff just before the garden centre towards St Monans. This is a summer territory and not far from where lots of corn buntings now winter. Although I am hearing corn buntings sing in the winter more often now as they increase in density, it is still an unusual sound at this time of year.
I headed back to Crail for the remembrance service. As I stood outside the Kirk by the war memorial for the two minutes silence I listened to the skylarks and meadow pipits calling as they flew over, the grumpy mistle thrushes arguing over the holly berries and a robin singing sweetly. Only a human silence. I was reminded – and it is one of the most poignant images of the First World War for me – of soldiers describing hearing nightingales, blackbirds and robins singing from no man’s land, and watching the swallows, whinchats and wheatears passing over in the spring. And what that contrast must have meant to those stuck in the trenches.
Further south easterlies and rain overnight yesterday haven’t made much difference. Everything was much as it was on Thursday this morning, except all the snipes and woodcocks have moved away, probably further inland. There were still a lot of goldcrests and some redwings about. At sea from Fife Ness I had a black-throated diver, a few red-throated divers and three distant adult little gulls passing south; there were guillemots and razorbills passing in reasonable numbers, also heading mostly south. Even further out were very large groups of kittiwakes and I suspect there were other more interesting things among them lost to the horizon.
Goldcrest – they really do have goldcrests if you get a good view from above
It’s hard to ignore a bit of easterly wind, even this late in the season. The last two days have been south-easterly and there were rain showers last night. So I was out at Kilminning this morning and there were a few winter migrants in. I got the snipe set. First, a jack snipe flushed from some boggy grass beside the road – a very atypical habitat for a jack snipe, but one that probably sufficed for a tired migrant hitting Scottish shores last night after a long flight over the North Sea. Second, a common snipe flushed from the stubble field by the airfield as I checked for buntings among the skylark. And third, a few woodcock, looking huge and cumbersome as they flushed after the small and fast jack snipe. There were more in Denburn so a fair few must have come in last night. Other obvious migrants were a brambling and a flock of over 20 twite flying over. It’s hard to tell if they were migrants too but there were also a lot of goldcrests about.
The snipe 3 – jack snipe, dark backed, never calls; common snipe, long billed and makes a “ergh” grunt as it flies away; woodcock, large and heavy looking
The cold spell finished this weekend and temperatures went up to 14 degrees both on Saturday and Sunday – a ten degrees difference from last weekend. In the more sheltered part of Roome Bay it was a few degrees warmer still in the afternoon sun. There was a mass emergence of seaweed flies as a consequence and they were also washed out with the high tide. The cliff end of Roome Bay was a mass of birds taking advantage. Mostly black-headed gulls swimming just on or behind the breaking surf, picking the flies or the maggots from the surface, occasionally all taking flight as a big wave broke over them. On the shore the Crail redshanks were all picking through the washed-up seaweed. About 30 of them with three of my colour-ringed birds (probably the only survivors now) among them. There were about 15 turnstones, a lot of rock pipits and some pied wagtails also joining in on the beach. I watched one of the pied wagtails, surrounded by a blizzard of flies, just picking them out of the air without having to move a few steps between swallows.
The seaweed fly festival at Roome Bay this afternoon – note the black specks around the pied wagtail, they are all flies. You will probably gather John is away (in Chile) at the moment so these are my photos taken with my phone through my telescope.
It wasn’t really a day for birding and I don’t think many people were out. The wind was just a bit too strong to find anything and even if you did you couldn’t really enjoy it. Kilminning was almost devoid of birds this afternoon – I had been hoping for a waxwing going over because there has been quite a good influx along the east coast this week. We may be in for a waxwing invasion this winter, but not quite here yet. I tried Balcomie Beach but there was nothing apart from the usual redshank, oystercatcher, ringed plover and a single dunlin. At sea there was a large flock of common scoters, diving and chasing each other. This is unusual for Balcomie – plenty of common scoters but they are usually passing rather than down on the sea feeding like in St Andrews Bay. I checked them for anything unusual. Sooner or later one of the surf scoters will make it past Fife ness. There was also a flock of about 10 long-tailed ducks a bit closer in. I watched them diving in synchrony. They spend so much time underwater that if I wasn’t looking exactly at the right place at the right time, it was if they weren’t there. A male red-breasted merganser fishing among the rocks like the goosanders of a couple of months ago completed the nice set of sea duck. Sea watching from Fife Ness was very quiet despite the strong southerly wind. Barely any gannets or kittiwakes this week. A couple of purple sandpipers on the rocks and some close guillemots were the only real highlights. I checked for the red-breasted flycatcher in the Patch at Fife Ness but it hadn’t been reported yesterday so I wasn’t hopeful. No sign of it so I suspect it left on Thursday night after a three day stay with us – about typical for a migrant this late in the year. It will have been in a hurry to get back on track to East Africa I cycled home feeling definitely like autumn has gone – my last summer migrant apart from the red-breasted flycatcher was a barn swallow over the old course last Monday. Another very late bird, although my latest Crail swallow was one over harbour beach on December 1st!
Male common scoter
Wild Crail 