The good dry weather continues – we haven’t had any rain of note for 4 weeks now. The wind is swirling around a bit, but predominantly south-west. The rate of arrival of summer migrants has slowed, with little new in over the last couple of days. But I did have a tree pipit at upper Kilminning this morning – it may be the first I have had in Crail in the spring. They are usually an August species. Tree pipits are very like meadow pipits except in their call – a buzzing “tzeep” rather than the thin “tsip-tsip” of a meadow pipit. Luckily tree pipits call a lot when flying so they are usually easy to pick up. The last tree pipits I saw were in January, in Liberia, and then lots in Nigeria in November. I see many more on the wintering grounds than in Crail – even though they breed in the west of Scotland and the Highlands, it is a good year for Crail if I see (or more likely hear) more than a handful. On one memorable evening in central Nigeria last November I watched hundreds of tree pipits coming in to a communal roost in a bit of scrubby woodland. They are common birds in farmland and degraded woodland – sometimes the more burnt and chopped the better – all over sub-Saharan Africa in winter. Like the swallows last week, today’s tree pipit connects me with warmer days and more exotic places.
There were some lingering winter migrants this morning. A pair of greylag geese at Balcomie, and a fieldfare at Kilminning. There have been a few flocks of greylag geese over Crail in the last few days. Greylag geese make a grumpy honking just like the archetypal farmyard goose that everyone knows, if not directly, from any period TV countryside drama. If you get a close view, their orange bills and a very pale forewing also make them easy to identify.
Wild Crail 
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