There is another big flock of Arctic terns at Kingsbarns – between 150-200 – and again with lots of juveniles. They must be fresh from their breeding colony because they started diving at me and my dog as we walked along red sands. It was half-hearted but there were lots of close terns and lots of their excited kipping calls so it felt like a breeding colony had suddenly materialized. On the beach alongside was a flock of summer plumage sanderling and my first adult Mediterranean gull of the summer. They are dispersing post breeding now and there are big numbers in the inner Forth. We should have Mediterranean gulls around Crail for the next month – adults are very handsome, look for the all white wings, the black eye mask and the bright red bill.
I had a tight flock of five raven soaring over Dunino. They looked like a family party, and at this time of year are likely to be local breeders. Perhaps the pair breeding at Kippo. If so, they have done well this year. They are still a very rare breeder in Fife but should be common. Finally I had another cuckoo flying by me as I cycled behind Hammer Inn, by Wormiston House. It was an adult being pursued by an angry meadow pipit and a swallow.
Mediterranean gull (front) and black-headed gull – similar but really quite different (John Anderson)
A morning’s holiday away from the corn buntings – they are so quiet now that I didn’t even hear one this morning as I cycled down to Balcomie and Fife Ness. The wader, goosander and tern numbers are building up. Maybe 150 dunlin now and joined by some sanderling and a flock of eight whimbrel. There was a flock of at least 14 goosander. And there may be as many as 125 Arctic terns on the rocks at Balcomie now, and a good few are juveniles which is nice to see. Some quite gingery ones that are only a week or two fledged, and some blackish ones that are a bit older. I think about 1 in 4 or 5 were juveniles, which seems to me fairly good for a long lived species. There were still only a few sandwich terns with them still but at least there is one juvenile there now. The shore will soon be full of the sound of late summer, the screeching of juvenile sandwich terns, persecuting their parents as more arrive. As I scanned through the waders and terns, the terns flew up calling in alarm, ascending rapidly in a big circling flock. About twenty seconds later the reason appeared – a juvenile male peregrine flying along the coast. The terns were ready for it and it was dive bombed as it flew below the flock. It looked like a very newly fledged bird, all buffy browns, and this will have been a tough experience for a new in town peregrine. Unless it was one of the newly fledged May Island peregrines: I should think they are used to a bit of tern harassment. As the peregrine headed off to Kingsbarns I noticed the whimbrels has also got in the air to get above it, whereas 15 curlews with them stayed firmly on the ground. Whimbrels are that bit smaller and certainly much faster and agile in the air so perhaps the aerial escape strategy is better for them. But peregrines hardly ever catch prey that stays on the ground, so the curlews were doing the best option I think – the many redshanks on the shore sensibly crouched and stayed on the ground too.
At Fife Ness only the late puffins and the gannets were passing. There was a flock of 30-40 manx shearwater milling around about a kilometer out. There must have been a good shoal of fish as gannets and kittiwakes soon joined them. Usually I count the manx shearwaters going past, but today it would have been a very high count as the flock circled around back and forth.
Juvenile Arctic tern having lost its initial gingery tips to the blackish feathers on its back and wing (John Anderson)
Today’s temperature reached 26 degrees at 1 pm. We had a bit of cloud and a breeze on and off during the day so for much of the day we were only at 22 or 23 degrees. The infrastructure of Crail won’t quite be melting down yet. It just felt like a nice day as I cycled round 36 km of corn bunting territories although the dog resorted to hiding under some potato plants at midday and refusing to go any further for a while. I lost a few nests over the last few days. It is always a shame – although hardly unusual – to get to a territory where a male has been perched close to its nest, singing periodically and happily for the last couple of weeks, to find the male all over the place, singing frantically, and chasing any female that might appear. I am never there for the dramatic nest failure – perhaps a badger snuffling the whole nest at night, or a crow or a kestrel taking the chicks one by one during the day. It must be very traumatic and I think many females just up sticks immediately and look for a new territory. We are getting to the limits of any chance of a successful renest though – a nest started now, and rushed, could only fledge chicks by the 17th of August at the earliest. This puts it firmly into harvest risk territory – many of the potato fields will be topped by then and the first winter barley fields are being harvested now. Interestingly, at least three of my nests at Kingsbarns, probably four, have started nesting again after successfully fledging quite a lot of chicks. They are over two weeks out of the nest now and are still in their natal territories, and the adults are still making the chick call to warn them when I am about. But they are not being fed by the adults any more.
I had my first tree pipit of the late summer along the grassy track between Hammer Inn and Crail. It popped up in front of me from the long grass and retreated to a nearby tree. I was pleased with myself because I identified it straight away as it flew up in front of me – somehow more patterned, lanky and distinct compared to a meadow pipit. With the temperature today it was all very African. Tree pipits feed in dry, sub-Saharan arable and pasture fields in the winter, but always close to a tree or large bush to retreat into. Then they perch high and watch you until you leave – which is what the bird did today. Meadow pipits fly up into trees as well, so you can’t use this to identify them, but any pipit that pops straight up into a tree and stays there is well worth double checking. Tree pipits breed in central and west Scotland and are very common. They turn up here in late summer as they disperse eastwards to feed up in the lowlands before migrating to Africa in August. Further down the track I had a couple of juvenile whinchats that were doing the same. And right on the edge of Crail, in the field just to the east of Balcomie Caravan Park (the one bordered by the strange double fence which is brilliant for whinchats just now) I heard a quail calling. This is my sixth this year. Not a great quail year, but pretty good when some years I don’t hear any.
The tree pipit today – the best things to look for are the more song thrush like head (well marked and stouter bill compared to a meadow pipit), the well spotted breast (again thrush like) but not the flanks, and the hind claw being not not particularly long (double the length on a meadow pipit and it would hang down a lot in this photo if this was a meadow pipit). And the tree…And one of the juvenile whinchats
The temperature topped out at 24 degrees between 7 and 8 this evening. It feels like another country sitting outside watching sixty swifts catching flying ants above my house, with black-headed and common gulls soaring around, flycatching like pratincoles. It seems like there are more swifts around Crail this July than ever: the residents were joined by the prospecting second or third years ten days ago. I think (we haven’t been able to successfully track any young swifts yet) the come up from Africa for just six weeks, bringing adolescent screaming parties to the rooftops. The adults got this out of their system at the start of May and have been dutifully been bringing up chicks ever since. It must be like Crail suddenly becoming Ayia Napa. I have been trying again to encourage them into my swift boxes (so they know where to go next year when they come back to breed). This evening I had up to 10 zooming past the boxes as I played back swift calls beneath them – it looks promising, but I have had my hopes dashed before. I put them up in July 2020 and only the house sparrows have used them in the two seasons since. Ten looking interested is six more than previous years though.
The waders are accumulating at Balcomie. Today there were about 50 – 70 dunlin (hard to tell at low tide when they are scattered among the rocky pools), with perhaps 10% of them being juveniles from this year. This ratio will go up as the month goes on because the adults always leave the breeding grounds first (pretty much a rule for all migrant birds). There was a summer plumaged turnstone in with them. This will be a failed adult. Up in the far north, some turnstones will only just have hatched their chicks and are still at the relative start of the breeding season. Perhaps an Arctic fox ate the eggs of this bird. Turnstones are long lived – 20 to 30 years in some cases – so it will have cut its losses and headed south to wait for next year. There was also a juvenile golden plover in with the dunlin. Golden and spangly, and fresh from the Highlands. Golden plover breed much earlier than turnstone, with some Scottish birds getting their eggs laid by the end of April, rather than having to wait until June. It is an exciting time through July and August as more and more waders come through Balcomie, with a reasonable chance of a rarer species turning up like little stint or curlew sandpiper. The Arctic terns were back on the rocky shore at Balcomie too. Some of the tern chicks have fledged already on the May but it seemed that it was mostly adults this morning. There should be family parties of terns on the shore for the next couple of months: Arctic and common, then lots of sandwich terns and if we are lucky, some roseate terns hidden among them. And a final late summer returnee – wheatears. There were two or more juveniles on the high tide line rocks at the north end of Balcomie Beach. This is one of the best places to see a wheatear locally – guaranteed, more or less, at this spot until the end of August. Juvenile wheatears often end up in small groups at passage sites (like whinchats). They haven’t migrated together, but they accumulate in the best habitats, and they are probably attracted to sites where there is already a wheatear because this is a great sign that it is probably a good site.
Returning dunlin at Balcomie (John Anderson). This is an adult – already moulting out of its black belly summer plumage and losing the warm brown and black back feathers, replaced by pale grey feathers of its winter plumage.
The whinchats are coming through in earnest now and it looks like it might be a good year. Some years they seem to be in every other field in July and early August; in other years there may only be one or two. The wind is from the west and most of the birds are juveniles, so hopefully they have had a good season in Scotland this year. Whinchats like it hot and dry: the farmland around Crail in many places looks pretty African at the moment, with the hot wind picking up the soil in big clouds, and the grass starting to look brown. Just add whinchats and barn swallows catching insects around the cow fields and you could easily be in Nigeria. Today I had 4 or 5 individuals. One was a very handsome just finished breeding adult male, but it wouldn’t let me get close enough for a photo. Most whinchats don’t want to be approached and flick away along the fence line where they might be perch hunting, but occasionally some individuals don’t mind a close approach. With whinchats it might be 1 bird in 50, whereas something like a robin or a dunnock it is 9 out of 10 individuals. Individual birds have variable “personalities”, but then individual species have average personalities. I can’t resist trying to photograph whinchats even though it is usually a poor show and in the distance. As I have written many times – they are your absolute top migrant in terms of their fantastic flexibility. An ultimate summer generalist, following the hot, dry weather from northern Norway to southern Africa, and turning up in any patch of scrubby or farmland habitat in between. Whinchats will always be in my top five birds.
Juvenile whinchat at Kippo Farm this morning – a juvenile because it has a spotty breast like a young robin (and most young chats)
One of my students working on the corn buntings has been seeing a barn owl regularly at Kilrenny, so I went on a safari in the gloaming last night. The barn owl(s) are – true to form – in the big red barn at Rennyhill Farm, just on the northwest edge of Kilrenny, at the edge of the Pitkierie plains. Here the cereal fields extend unbroken by any other vegetation for two kilometers. Great for corn buntings, skylarks and even a yellow wagtail last year, and now a good site for barn owls. The edges of the fields and the drainage ditches must provide good hunting areas for an owl, and the fields themselves must be full of mice and voles. A barn owl appeared last night from the barn at about 10 pm and flew slowly and elegantly along the road north towards the first drainage ditch. They are always beautiful birds to see and at this time of year, 10 o’clock at night was still more than light enough to appreciate the whites and golds of its plumage. And its anti-gravity flight. Like an Arctic tern – each wingbeat lifts the whole body up making it look like it is struggling to stay down, rather than up. I haven’t seen a barn owl well for years – it is usually a brief glimpse from the car of one flying over or perched beside the road, and in the pitch dark. There are quite a few barn owls breeding on the Crail patch but they are strictly nocturnal. But they don’t have a choice to avoid the gloaming this time of year – it is never properly dark – and if the owls are breeding they will have seven or eight young to feed. They can’t wait for darkness.
There was a little pulse of mid summer migrants today. I had a juvenile whinchat among the stonechats lining the new fence next to Balcomie Caravan Park, and another was reported from the usual spot at Kilminning later. There were several grasshopper warblers reported singing from new areas in Fife, and I caught up with one this evening at Kilminning. One was singing vigorously from a large bush in the sheep field directly behind the green pumping shed. Why a southward heading – post breeding – grasshopper warbler should be singing is beyond me. But apparently grasshopper warblers do this quite often, even as they get to the Mediterranean and into the autumn. They then don’t sing on the wintering ground, which coupled with their love of dense cover, means we don’t really know where they winter. Somewhere across West Africa, south of the Sahara, and probably a good bit of East Africa too. Tagging grasshopper warblers isn’t really an option to solve this because grasshopper warblers are not very site faithful, so recovering a tag with a record of its travels a year later is very unlikely. And grasshopper warblers are far too small to wear a tag that might send its location off to a mobile phone mast or a satellite. Still, at least their singing behaviour on migration gets them found.
The grasshopper warbler at Kilminning this evening.
Twenty six degrees this afternoon which is nearly as warm as Crail ever gets. Great weather for fledglings. Although we have had some sharp showers in the last couple of weeks, we have had none of the sustained, wet and cool weather that can kill newly fledged birds. The swallows and house martins seem to be doing very well – lots of their fledglings about; and I know the field nesting birds are all fledging lots of chicks at the moment – the reed buntings, skylarks, yellowhammers and whitethroats seem to be doing really well, with lots of second broods. At sea it is hard to tell what is going on – the gannet corpses keep turning up on the beach because of bird flu, although it seems to be mainly gannets rather than other species. It all looked fairly normal at Fife Ness this morning: gannets, guillemots and puffins going back and forth. Arctic terns passing regularly, all heading back to the May with a good sized sand eel, and the occasional post-breeding sandwich tern. A common sandpiper flew in to land on the rocks just in front of me before realizing how close I was and retreating. The redshanks are starting to accumulate post breeding. There were perhaps 20 in the roost at Fife Ness today.
A few notable birds during my corn bunting rounds (fledged chicks now in some territories) today. My first common sandpiper on the Crail patch for the year. They head back to Africa from the Highlands in July and some spend a few weeks on the rocky shore around Crail. I had another returning migrant – my first juvenile northern wheatear of the year, in a sprout field at Dunino. Sad local patch highlight of the day was only my third ever Crail red-legged partridge running away from me down the Drony Road at Kinsgbarns. Not a long way from my second record on April 9th this year – 1.3km away at Hillhead farm so I should think it is the same bird.
Although I am not posting much at the moment it’s not because I am not going out. But I am focused on corn bunting nests and I appreciate that is a fairly specialist subject. My day to day soap operas of polygamy, divorce, desertion, and death are riveting to me as I try to work out corn bunting productivity. But you probably have to be there to fully appreciate an hour waiting to see a shy female break cover and take a load of caterpillars to a nest to confirm it is still active. And this is multiplied by the 25 or so nests that I need to keep track of to make generalisations about what might be happening for the population. It is peaceful though and between the heavy showers this week, pleasant enough, but not that exciting in a narrative sense. As I say to my students – if your data collection is not repetitive (and in one sense boring) – then you are doing it wrong. The excitement in biological fieldwork comes from the random, exceptional stuff that appears while you do the rounds, again and again. Overall, it has been a good week for my nests – most have hatched as hoped for and there are lots of chicks being fed just now. And of course new territories are popping up and new nests starting too.
This is the same corn bunting territory in Kingsbarns that I posted on June 25th with a photo of this parent (or the male – both are feeding in this pair) carrying much smaller edible prey for 1 day old chicks. The chicks are now day 8 and big enough to leap out of the nest and clamber away through the spring barley stalks to safety if a predator found the nest. If you zoom in you can see that earwigs are now on the menu for the much bigger chicks (28gm rather than 3gm – estimating on average, I haven’t approached this nest because I would trample the crop).
This week there has been a noticeable curlew passage, with big flocks of curlews (50+) at Balcomie and the airfield. Single birds call as the pass high over Crail (a mournful “coor-lee” surprisingly) as do the occasional whimbrels (7 repeated very slightly descending in tone whistles) that also appeared this week. I had my first bar-tailed godwit of the year passing in one of the curlew flocks. But otherwise there are few waders passing. Just a few ringed plover and redshank back at Balcomie this morning. More cuckoos were passing this week. A brown individual yesterday at Wormiston – probably a bit early to be a juvenile so a rufous morph female, and a typical grey adult at Kilminning Coast this morning. Kilminning is the go to place for a cuckoo this time of year but you have to be alert – you only see the shy birds flying away, but they are often chased by noisy, mobbing swallows. I had my first returning whinchat in a winter wheat field between Balcomie and Wormiston. They are early returning migrants like the cuckoos but in contrast they often stay around Crail for a few weeks.
Curlew – epic migrants (John Anderson)
I did a quick seawatch at Fife Ness this morning. The usual suspects but a bit poignant as every gannet and kittiwake that goes past makes me think of the bird flu that is more than decimating populations. The commonest birds passing were puffins. We may be denied a visit to the May Island now to help relieve stress on the suffering birds there but you can still get some puffin action, albeit a bit further away, at Fife Ness. And a little bit of good news further down the shore – the Balcomie shelducks have at least one well grown chick.
Female shelduck and its chick at Balcomie this week
Wild Crail 