Another quiet day despite migrants trickling in to the May Island on light easterlies. The yellow wagtail and wheatears at Balcomie have moved on, and Kilminning, both upper and lower were fairly bird free. I spent most of the morning again on Balcomie Beach watching the waders and the passing sea birds. The number of ringed plovers on the beach is really high – perhaps the most I have ever seen. As I sat there more and more became visible. When you walk on the beach they fly away, but if you sit down on a rock, they come back over the next ten minutes, and soon you are surrounded by them as if you don’t exist. Space is at a real premium, with the juveniles setting up tiny feeding territories and spending much of their time pacing along the invisible boundaries to discourage their neighbours from trespassing, or chasing them when they do. The territories are only about 5 by 5 meters each, but each bird sticks to their own patch, returning to the same patch after a disturbance. It will be interesting to see if these are just temporary territories for passage birds, here for a few weeks, or whether they last through the winter.
A juvenile ringed plover pacing along the edge of its tiny territory boundary on Balcomie Beach this morning – you can just see a neighbour’s tail on the right. It is doing exactly the same. The body is tilted towards its rival and the they walk in an exaggerated shuffling way. If one crosses the territory line then it can erupt into a brief scuffle and a chase.
I spent much of the day at Balcomie Beach looking for passing black terns. There are a few being seen along the coast of Fife this week. No luck today but it didn’t really matter. It was one of those days when there was always something to see. There were lots of waders around on the beach: over one hundred ringed plover and dunlin, a few sanderling and turnstone. There were whimbrel passing all day in small flocks and this morning a flock of 11 bar-tailed godwit with a single adult knot in the lead. Three of the best high Arctic, long distance superstars. I write a lot and often about waders and their incredible flight capability but they never cease to impress and inspire me. Once again, I could easily imagine the godwits and the knot starting their journey in Novaya Zemlya, 3,200 kilometers away by direct flight from Siberia, along the coast of Norway, on Thursday evening. And now they are with us in Scotland on Saturday morning, 36 hours later. Godwits have been tracked doing these non-stop journeys at these speeds and much more. Another 2 days continuous flight would put them on a beach in Senegal and this would still not be the maximum range for a non-stop bar-tailed godwit flight. The flock circled around Balcomie for a few minutes but didn’t land and headed off over Fife Ness. They may well be on a beach in the Forth this evening, rather than trying to earn their marathon gold medals, but then again they may already be entering the Bay of Biscay, well on the way to Portugal. In this case, the knot may well have bowed out – still a superstar fast ultra-long distance migrant, but a much smaller bird, and so with a much smaller “fuel tank”.
Bar-tailed godwits (John Anderson)
The pied wagtails must also have had a good breeding season this summer and the beach had one every few meters – mostly juveniles. Pied wagtails occasionally have feeding territories and exclude others as they circuit around them. It doesn’t seem to be viable at such high bird densities and there is so much seaweed maggot and sandhopper food to go round making defending the resource a waste of time. But I noticed one pied wagtail chasing another vigorously away from its patch: it flew and called and the reason became clearer. A yellow wagtail. Clearly the economics of territory defence don’t apply when an upstart migrant of another species appears on the patch. The yellow wagtail was on the north end of Balcomie Beach – the place I have seen more migrant yellow wagtails than anywhere else in spring and autumn. It looked like a male blue-headed –a continental bird – but it was moulting into winter plumage so I am not sure. There was some more inter-species chasing. A swallow chasing a juvenile wheatear around the beach for about a minute. A close tail chase like a tiny bird of prey. The two species both eat flies on the beach, but hardly seem to compete? There were another seven or so northern wheatears on the beach between Balcomie and Fife Ness.
The migrant yellow wagtail on Balcomie Beach this morning about to be escorted off the premises by a resident juvenile pied wagtail
Sea watching at Balcomie was great today, especially at high tide, with the sun behind me. I sat on the first small rocky promontory past the north end of the beach – it is a bit more intimate than Fife Ness where you might see everything passing, but usually only a long way away. There were common and sandwich terns, and kittiwakes and a little gull feeding very close in. They suddenly spooked and a light phase arctic skua appeared, mugging a kittiwake for a fish. It stayed hunting in the area for a while giving me some lovely views. Other skuas today – dark phase arctic skuas passing Fife Ness and Crail and a great skua were the usual birds at a distance. Always nice to see but not the crowd pleaser of the arctic skua harassing sandwich terns a few tens of meters away. And more distant still, a steady stream of manx shearwaters, mostly passing north.
Arctic skua mugging a kittiwake (John Anderson)
At lunchtime I was at Pinkerton in Crail helping a friend with an injured sparrowhawk in their back garden. It was a young male that had hit a window and sprained its wing. I couldn’t catch it so wasn’t much help. It was pretty vigorous and could nearly fly – later in the day it did get airborne and left the garden so fingers crossed for it. But coincidentally, I noticed a mysterious sparrowhawk kill in the front garden. Sparrowhawks completely pluck their prey before eating them so leave a neat pile of feathers as a record of what they have killed. It is always a good puzzle to work out what has been caught. Today though I was stumped for a bit. I had to learn to identify sparrowhawk kills during my PhD, and over the course of over 1,000 kills I learnt to recognize a lot of species. Today’s though was a new one. It looked a bit like a gamebird or a wader but had a very long tail, and the breast feathers looked like a bird of prey, except they were downy at the base just like a pigeon, and very rufous like an owl. Some strange chimera. Then the penny dropped – like a bird of prey with a long tail – a juvenile cuckoo. They must pass through Crail gardens and they are probably an easy catch for a sparrowhawk as they blunder about on the ground after caterpillars. The cuckoo trick of mimicking a bird of prey clearly didn’t put off the sparrowhawk that got it. Puzzle solved but I was left with the dilemma of whether I would have added the cuckoo to my garden list if I had found the remains in my front garden. I’ll probably just stick to my current strategy and keep my bedroom window open in early May and hope to hear one at dawn (as I did a few times during the lockdown summer when I was out at 5 every morning).
My forensic reconstruction of the juvenile cuckoo killed by a sparrowhawk in Crail this week. Tail feathers in the middle, wing feathers top left and right, some barred breast feathers top and lots of downy body feathers bottom right
It was a tree pipit migration day. I had at least five between Crail and Kippo Farm and I suspect I saw more. You need a good view or a call to distinguish them from meadow pipits, especially in flight, and there were also plenty of migrating meadow pipits about today. I was in the Cairngorms on Monday looking for eagles (two golden eagles shepherding a white-tailed eagle out of their territory being the highlight), and there were plenty of both pipit species still about on their breeding grounds. A population of migrants arrive and leave over a long period, the first individuals arriving 6-8 weeks earlier than the last ones, and then when leaving in the autumn, that period can extend 8-12 weeks (as a very rough generalization). Different species vary – swifts have a very sharp arrival and exit, whereas swallows, and indeed most species, are much less focused. So at this time of year it is very hard to tell the migrants passing through from the residents. There are still whitethroats everywhere, but I have no idea how many of these are migrants. Others which don’t breed here are obvious, like tree pipits and the whinchat and the marsh harrier that I also saw today at Kippo.
Tree pipit still in breeding habitat in the central Cairngorms on the 22nd August, but perhaps now one of the birds staging through Crail today on its way back to Africa
Every year the swifts seem to stay a bit later. There were good numbers on Monday, and a couple still around Crail today. But most have gone this week, I think, and single birds are appearing in odd places indicative that the remaining birds are mostly migrants passing through. I hope they have had a good year- I counted the highest number of swifts over Crail in July that I have ever seen, but some of these may not have been local birds. The swallows and house martins have certainly done exceptionally well. I had a flock of about 200 fledged swallows and martins up at Kippo Farm this morning: they were like a blizzard around the shelter belt.
One of the many newly fledged house martins that have been produced this summer (John Anderson)
I cycled out in the rain showers this morning to catch up with a ruff reported from the pools at Kilrenny Mill (now chalking up its third good wader this month) two days ago. I found a juvenile feeding in the brackish algal pools with redshanks, although it was often being chased by them. Ruff are a bit like redshank in size and feeding behaviour so they must compete with each other. Plumage wise, juvenile ruff are cinnamon and buff and have an oddly too small head for their body (like a pigeon) which gives them a distinctive colour and shape. I have had ruff on the Crail year list in 8 out of the last 10 years so they are nearly reliable. Some years there are several, and they are often inland in pasture fields hanging out with cows, or in puddles in tractor ruts in harvested fields.
The ruff at Kilrenny Mill since the 18th (John Anderson)
I was sea watching out of the back of my house this evening. The sea was still sunlit although Crail was already in shadow. I was looking through the kittiwakes – not as many as yesterday but still a sea full of them – when I picked up a tern half the size of one of them with flickery wingbeats. It was a long way off and I thought about a possible little tern without being totally convinced. It headed off west obscured by the trees on one side of my garden that block my view of the Forth. I wondered about the one that might have got away. But a few minutes later I picked up a small tern trying to roost on a lobster pot much closer in. The light was fading but I picked up a white forehead, a black leading edge and of course rapid wing beats as it hovered to stay on slippery the lobster pot. A definite little tern. Size is no good at all as a character without reference to something and although the tern looked tiny, it was as Father Ted said to Dougal, a long way away. Eventually a kittiwake obliged and passed behind to confirm it was indeed small. A great garden tick and only the 5th little tern for the Crail patch list (after the family group of 3 at Kingsbarns earlier this month, and one in 2020). This takes my garden list (birds seen while I am in my garden or house rather than them actually being in my garden) to 142. Crail is not too shabby really.
Little tern (John Anderson). I am glad of the opportunity to post another one of John’s brilliant little tern photos from earlier this year
Over the last few days there has been a very large number of kittiwakes passing Fife Ness, heading south. This evening there were thousands passing between Crail and the May Island. David Steel – the warden on the May – counted 4,500 in a couple of hours. And very many of them (more than half?) were juveniles. Somewhere, some kittiwakes have had a great breeding season. There were some other seabirds around, at least this morning. I had my first sooty shearwater of the year past Crail and a couple of dark phase arctic skuas.
A pied flycatcher popped up during ringing in the Patch this morning. Probably it had been hiding out there since Monday or yesterday. I biked down immediately to see it. Although pied flycatchers are really only scarce birds, the last one on the Crail Patch was in September 2020, and then there were only a couple that year. It has been a pied flycatcher famine in the intervening 23 months: I might expect to get one or two in the spring and a handful in the autumn in a good year (i.e. when the easterlies deliver). So although not superstitious, to ignore this bird would set me up for no more pied flycatchers in the near future. Twitching this morning has guaranteed that we will now have a ton of pied flycatchers during the autumn. But the real reason was pied flycatchers are great birds to look at and in their behaviour and their migration. It was a young bird this morning with more than usual white on its wing and outer tail suggesting a much rarer species, but sadly it was a mix of characters, so best identified as an “ordinary” pied flycatcher.
Pied flycatcher caught (and being held) by the resident ringer at Fife Ness, Chris Broome (he does actually live in the shed behind him)
More rain overnight – this time a substantial amount. But again nothing new was brought down. A busted flush again at Kilminning with just the same couple of willow warblers calling softly from the whitebeams. I consoled myself with some sea watching. The wind was northerly by the afternoon and getting stronger. There were hundreds of kittiwakes passing, heading south and most were juveniles which is very good to see. Occasional small flocks of manx shearwaters were heading north, there were a couple of puffins but otherwise hoped for larger shearwaters were absent. The highlight of the watch delivered two new birds for the Crail year list. A flock of five black-tailed godwits heading north, quite far out and low over the sea, and with them a knot leading the way. Black-tailed godwits are barely an every other year bird so it was great to see them, even though a quick trip up to the Eden at any time will deliver some. They pass through every year of course but you have to be in the right place at the right time to see them, or move house into the hide at Fife Ness.
Black-tailed godwit (John Anderson)
I checked Balcomie Beach briefly. Mainly ringed plovers but one of them was individually marked with colour rings and a flag. Luckily I had my telescope so I could read the numbers on the flag. A Norwegian ringing scheme bird – I have just sent off the email to the ringer (you track them down using https://cr-birding.org/). Hopefully a Svalbard bird!
The colour-marked ringed plover that I will hopefully have a story to tell about when the Norwegian ringer gets back to me
I was at Fife Ness yesterday afternoon at the high tide. The moon is full and close (very impressive rising above the sea last Thursday, huge and red) and so the tide was particularly high. Stinky pool had just become an inlet. I was counting the whimbrels (three) among the waders roosting there when I spotted a small bird zooming low over the water straight towards me like an orange dart. A kingfisher. Local patch gold. It perched on the rocks by the pool for a little while, before disappearing among the rocks. This is only my third year with a kingfisher featuring on the Crail year list. In previous years it has been one taking up residence for a few months on a bit of rocky shore so I hope this one also stays around. Kingfishers almost certainly bred somewhere along the Dreel Burn this year and I have gone a few times in an attempt to see them. But they have been very elusive. I should think yesterday’s kingfisher was one of the fledglings dispersing. Kingfishers are very happy on a rocky shore or in a brackish estuary. They don’t get wet when they dive and they are only interested in the fish rather than the water it is in.
Kingfisher at Fife Ness (John Anderson)
The easterlies continued yesterday and the rain arrived last night, with some thunder. All set up for a good day today, but again nothing materialized at Kilminning for me this morning. A pied and a spotted flycatcher was eventually found but I couldn’t track them down when I went out again this evening. I was treated to some close views of a couple of hyperactive stoats. I stood and squeaked like a mouse and both approached me, but I had my dog sitting at my feet so they didn’t come too close. As I left another double, two fawns following an adult roe deer. I am seeing fawns most days at the moment as they get large enough to break cover and follow their mothers around in the open.
There is an easterly on (hence the murkier day yesterday and early on today) with some rain forecast for tomorrow night. That will make it the magic 3 days followed by overnight rain between mid-August to early November which means the chance of good birds (about 1 in 4 times…). Maybe this one will be the one – a mid-August migrant fall can be brilliant – but they are rare. I have only had a couple of good ones in 20 years. Today is only day 2 of the easterly but nothing like peaking too early so I spent a few hours today down at Balcomie Beach, Fife Ness and Kilminning, split between first thing in the morning and late afternoon. Still it is good to get a baseline – lots of willow warblers but nothing else landbird migrant wise. At sea, lots more sandwich terns, many fewer Arctic terns. Only about 50 manx shearwaters through the day. Several whimbrels passing, and a couple of common sandpipers calling invisibly from the rocky shore. Best were the waders on Balcomie Beach. Nothing special but lots of them and very busy so lots to look at and lots of birds to check just in case. There were about one hundred dunlin, 50 ringed plover, and a handful of turnstone and sanderling on the main beach. In the afternoon they were concentrated along the high tide strandline, allowing me to get within a few tens of meters. The sandhoppers were popping out of the sand in a blizzard and the waders (and black headed gulls) were feeding at a rate of a sandhopper every few seconds. Great feeding for the dunlins and ringed plover to put on fat for their continuing migration – it is impossible to say exactly but some of the juveniles I was watching this afternoon will end up on a beach or mangrove mud flat in West or even Southern Africa.
Part of the dunlin festival at Balcomie this afternoon. These are mostly juveniles, with a couple of adults in the far background
There are a lot of insects about this summer, which has translated into lots of young birds. But the insects themselves also need a mention every so often without reference to their value as bird food. Moths seem really abundant this year. I have had several new species in the garden. Today I found an orange swift moth in my living room. They are not uncommon but have a patchy distribution in Scotland. Many moths are incredible works of art close up. Old school you used to use a hand lens to admire them. Now it’s take a smart phone photo and blow it up. A big improvement on a hand lens: bigger, brighter and you can share the result.
There is a marsh harrier currently hunting the stubble fields between Caiplie and Crail, mostly around Caiplie. I first saw it three days ago and it was there yesterday; today I had some close flyovers as I hunkered down in one of the fields at Barnsmuir trying to get a good flight photograph. The marsh harrier obliged but it was still beyond my camera and my ability.
Yesterday a little ringed plover was found in the same pool at Kilrenny Mill that hosted the white-rumped sandpiper a week ago. I cycled down there this morning: a little ringed plover is a good bird for the Crail patch and this one was just the 4th in 20 years. They are rare breeders in Fife but they like freshwater pools which are in very short supply here. All my records near Crail are of juveniles, on their way south to Africa, stopping by brackish pools on flat rocky shores. Juvenile waders often end up in odd places. Today’s bird was another juvenile, around another brackish pool, surrounded by big flat rocks and sandy shingle. It appeared the moment I arrived, flying to the back of the pool from the beach by the coastal path, giving its distinctive “pee-uu” call. Unlike the white-rumped sandpiper it was fairly shy, retreating like this whenever a walker came past. I sat at the edge of the pool and gradually the other disturbances replaced me being important, and it fed along the pool edge for 30 minutes, although never coming close. Little ringed plovers are very prim looking waders – a big eye and domed head and a very calculated few steps, freeze and pick way of feeding makes them look prissy. Common ringed plovers are much more energetic and rough and ready looking. The more you look at little ringed plovers, the more distinctive they become.
Two photos of the little ringed plover today – not great photos (although better than today’s marsh harrier) but good enough to show how to identify one. A neat look, rounded head, small bill and big eye (with a yellow eye ring at close range) – the head looks too small for its body. The body is very long with the wings and tail extending out. Two other great characters that allow you to pick one up in a crowd of common ringed plovers: no obvious white or paler area above the eye, and the brown hood having a square corner below the cheek. Juvenile common ringed plover for comparison (John Anderson). Taken on August 12th (but 2009) so a similar age to the little ringed plover above and about as similar as they get.
There have been a few notable birds in the last few days. On Friday (but eclipsed at the time by the white-rumped sandpiper) I had a juvenile cuckoo resting along the edge of a cow field. It was a juvenile because its back feathers were white fringed and it also showed some rufous in the wings. The overall impression is off a dirtier bird than an adult cuckoo – although at this time of year almost every adult is already in sub-Saharan Africa so any cuckoo seen around Crail now will be a juvenile. August cuckoos are rarer than July cuckoos but there is still a reasonable chance of seeing the odd one over the next couple of weeks.
A poor photo of the juvenile cuckoo on Friday but good enough to show the white tipped feathers on its back and rufous feathers in the wing. Juveniles also should have a prominent white nape but this one had no trace of one
Yesterday (Saturday), I had a juvenile marsh harrier at Kingsbarns. It was passing down the coast and headed southwest towards Anstruther, cutting the corner of Fife Ness. Marsh harriers are often “low” migrants, passing through at treetop height – I think probably hunting as they go. Some birds stay in the area for several days, particularly as the fields are harvested and the stubbles offer better hunting.
I had my 7th quail of the year calling from the spring barley field between the St Andrews road and the footpath from Crail to Hammer Inn, closer to Hammer Inn. It was only a few meters from the footpath but shut up as soon as cycled past. It was calling again today so may well be a breeder. Quail’s breeding seasons are spectacularly long: migrants can arrive even in August and get a brood off.
I checked the tern flock at Red Sands (just north of Kingsbarns) yesterday and today. Still a great spectacle but no roseate terns in among them and surprisingly few sandwich terns. I had my first little gull of the year passing through the flock. A handsome adult although just starting to lose its black hood. Today I had a second little gull at Kenly water. A first summer bird: a tiny trace of a hood, small black tips to its wings and a pale (i.e. as with most other gulls) underwing. This is probably the most cryptic of their plumages as they lack the distinctive all pale grey upperwings and contrasting black underwings of the adults and they lack the black “W” on their upperwings of a first winter bird. Size and flappy flight gives them away, but perched among other gulls they don’t really stand out. Little gulls will become common over the next few weeks although rarely close in or on the shore as these two birds were.
The little gull today at Kenly Water to show how a first summer might just escape notice if on the ground or water with black-headed gulls
Today I had 9 wall butterflies between Kinsbarns and Kenly Water; yesterday I had one at Wormiston. Just two years ago (August 2020) I found some of the very first wall butterflies recorded for Fife at Caiplie and then Kenly Water. Climate change is massively positively affecting the northern distribution of many butterflies, and this southern England species when I was a boy learning my butterflies in the late 1970’s is now firmly spreading into Scotland. I saw another butterfly on the spread at Pitmillie today – a speckled wood. This is less to do with climate change. They were widespread across the UK but massively declined 100 years ago, retreating to Wales and south-west England. They have been spreading back east and north ever since. Speckled woods are still a good sighting around Crail; upper Kilminning is perhaps the best place to look although Pitmillie has the footpaths, trees and dappled shade that they really like.
Wall butterfly at Wormiston Farm yesterday. Right alongside a wall.
It has been a while since a new – as in a first for the Crail Patch – bird has turned up. This afternoon a white-rumped sandpiper was found at Kilrenny Mill. White-rumped sandpipers are North American waders, breeding in the high Arctic, and wintering in South America. I saw my last one in Alaska over 20 years ago. Needless to say they are fairly rare in Scotland, although the first for Fife turned up last week when there was a minor influx of a few tens of birds across the UK. And now one on the Crail list. I was cutting a hedge in my back garden when my phone rang this afternoon. I nearly ignored it but it’s unusual for anyone to call these days unless it’s something urgent like a rarity in the area. The message was that a white-rumped sandpiper had been found by the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) Scottish Office out on a team building day out (so naturally they were birding). It takes a bit of courage to call a white-rumped sandpiper. They look a lot like dunlin and almost never show their diagnostic white rump unless they are flying away, which is when you start to lose confidence. But they are subtly different from dunlin, particularly in having very long wings that extend well beyond the end of their tail. In dunlin the wings end at the tail. It gives a very distinctive long back ended silhouette (like a little ringed plover but more so), shared only by the equally rare American wader, a Baird’s sandpiper.
I deserted the gardening immediately and drove down to Kilrenny. It’s just on the edge of whether I can get there quicker by bike or by car. The road is quicker by car but then you have a walk in, and cycling, although slower to start, would have allowed me to short cut through Cornceres farm and bike directly down to the bird. On hindsight I should have cycled but there was a small element of panic in me because waders that turn up at Kilrenny Mill are right next to the busy coastal path and so easily disturbed. I needn’t have worried. The bird was like the dunlins at Balcomie, completely indifferent to people just 25 meters away. I soon joined the small crowd of BTO staff and diehard local birders and was immediately watching the white-rumped sandpiper very close to me. It was a really nice bird, feeding happily, showing all of its key features well (even its white rump a couple of times as it flew a few meters as the dunlins around it spooked to golden plovers flying over). I was even able to see one of its very obscure identification features – the lower, base of the bill is brown, whereas for most similar waders the bill is all black. I watched it for 30 minutes: number 237 for the Crail list and a great start to the autumn rarity season. And back in time for Friday gin o’clock to celebrate.
White-rumped sandpiper – wings longer than the tail; neatly fine spotted breast; well marked supercilium; brown base to the lower bill. This photo is using my phone through my telescope.And the final feature – the white rump (John Anderson). You need a better camera setup than phonescoping and a better photographer to nail that one.
I have been away for a week to Kos in Greece – in seven days I saw 42 species (and two of these were a dead great cormorant – bird flu – and a distant unidentified kestrel species). There are lots of reasons for this (time of year, temperature, island) and it is another story, but today I saw 42 species in less than 2 hours as I walked around the four fields at Kingsbarns as I reconnected with the corn bunting nests I am monitoring. I often think I live in an area that lacks birds, but everything is relative. It was great to be back, surrounded by birds, and where a walk along a field edge puts up linnets, goldfinches, skylarks, woodpigeon, stock dove, corn buntings, tree and house sparrows, yellowhammers, reed buntings, four gull species, buzzard, pied wagtail and so on. An equivalent walk around a field edge on Kos turned up only one or two birds – true, one of these might have been a bee-eater or a long-legged buzzard, but mostly it was an empty, quiet environment. And our coast is also relatively brilliant in comparison – yesterday at Kingsbarns there was a flock of three hundred or more terns – arctic, common, sandwich and fishing at the end of the Drony Road, three little terns (more on this local patch gold below), and there were six wader species, 7 gull species, eiders, gannets, shags and cormorants. The same amount of time along a piece of shore alongside a village in Kos would turn up just four species (again one of these would be an exotic Scopoli’s shearwater or an Eleonora’s falcon, so some compensation) and only a handful in terms of numbers. My choice of holiday destination wasn’t dictated by birding – my fifteen year old daughter was the main consideration – but it wasn’t entirely random. The Mediterranean is a great destination for wildlife and birds, even in late July. Still I was surprised at the end of the week to have the lowest total species list I have ever had, anywhere in the world in the same amount of time (apart from Antarctica – and then the whales and seals make up a much larger list). I already count my blessings to live where I do, but I will now appreciate it a bit more.
And back to the little terns – yesterday’s star birds. My 2nd, 3rd and 4th little tern on the Crail patch in 20 years! I have only had one other passing Fife Ness a couple of years ago. Little terns are hard to overlook. They have a supercharged flight – rapid wing beats, twice the speed of other terns, often raised right above the body, and an erratic flight, with frequent changes of height and direction. It looked like there were dragonflies among the butterflies, that were the Arctic and common terns around them. The three were a family party. An even more frantic than usual adult fishing with two juveniles following it, and with a constant shrill single note calls that just cut through the other species of terns in their family parties. The little terns were there all day, up and down the sea close to the shore between the car park at Kingsbarns and the rocks at Red Sands (where most of the terns are hanging round). I suspect they might be here a few days – it is clearly a brilliant place for terns at the moment. I wouldn’t be surprised if some roseate terns are also present – or join them – and even a black tern as August progresses. Regardless, even if it just the Arctic terns there, it is one of the best bits of birding locally at the moment. And lots of juvenile Arctic, common and sandwich terns which is really encouraging in this bird flu year.
Wild Crail 