Thirteen degrees. The mildest day of the year so far and the frogs were out in force in my garden. A few have been appearing in my pond for the last 10 days but today serious numbers arrived with traffic jams on the patio. Mid-February is when it usually kicks off with spawn appearing in another two to three weeks when the females turn up.
Not all weekends can be exciting, and particularly in February, in very dreich weather. Everything is much the same as it has been all winter in Crail and although the evenings are getting noticeably lighter it is still a month before the first summer migrants start arriving back. Yesterday I walked around Crail – Roome Bay and Sauchope. There were a couple of distant red-throated divers, grey wagtails and rock pipits on the beach, and the usual wader roost at Sauchope. The numbers go up and down at Sauchope, particularly the golden plover. Today there were about 50 plovers, spending more time flying about in a nervous flock than resting on the rocks. Less conspicuous were the purple sandpipers and turnstones also among the rocks.
Today I walked the loop from Kingsbarns to Kenly Water along the coast and back through Pitmilly. There was a very large linnet flock in the game crop near the golf course, but no corn buntings until Boghall Farm. There are a lot of fields there sown with grass and augmented with fodder beet for the many sheep on the farm this winter. And this is working for the birds. Hundreds of fieldfares, corn buntings and a flock of 75 lapwing, as well as the usual large mixed gull and crow flocks. The lapwings kept on flying up and towering in a dense flock that means a peregrine is about but there were so many birds in the sky above the fields that I couldn’t find it. Later on, as I sat at Kenly Water, the lapwings gave up on the fields for a while, coming down to roost on the rocky shore like golden plover. Coming back through Hillhead Farm the muddy track had some great tracks on it: horses, dogs, fox and lots of badger with their distinctive wide pads, five toes and deep claw marks well out to the front. You are always only a few meters away from where a badger has been sometime in the last few days anywhere in the East Neuk. There signs are everywhere – footprints, poo, trails and setts. It is amazing we see them so little except as corpses beside the road.
There is something up with the herons this year. First a new heronry outside my office window in St Andrews, then a pair building in the Kirkyard at Kilrenny last week and now a pair firmly in residence in the big flat tree behind Crail Kirk. There have been herons trying to breed in Crail Kirkyard for the last few years but I have never been convinced that they have got going early enough to produce any chicks. This year looks good though. A pair, with a nest, and ready to go in the next couple of weeks.
There was a pile of feathers in my back garden today. A sparrowhawk kill, with its telltale OCD plucking of every single feather from the smallest downy body feather to the largest wing feather, and a neat bright white line where the feeding sparrowhawk lifted up it tail and shot out a projectile streak of poo. Sparrowhawks usually pluck their prey in cover – under a bush or in a hedge – but occasionally they pluck in the open, especially at dusk and dawn. They need to avoid the attention of crows or other raptors that will steal their prey. My back garden victim was a starling. I picked through the feathers to discover the glossy green and white spotted body feathers and the glossy blackish brown wing feathers. Amongst the feathers was a leg, the bill and some of the gut contents. Sparrowhawks prepare what is essentially an oven ready chicken – the feathers, head, legs and guts removed – and then start feeding on the breast. They take the remains of prey with them when they are full. If it is a big prey bird, like a pigeon, this may involve several sites over the rest of the day before the final chest and bare wing bones are discarded. The kill was fresh and the first location. I suspect one of the starlings that roost in my nearby ivy hedge got caught out in the dawn half-light this morning. I reconstructed the shape of the starling from its feathers. A macabre, birdy jigsaw puzzle but I could see how all the feathers fit together and just how many of them there are on a bird. It takes a sparrowhawk about 20-30 minutes to pluck a song bird which seems pretty fast for the scope and precision of the task.
It felt almost spring like this morning. Mostly because of the skylarks between Crail and Wormiston singing their hearts out. It seems almost impossible to work out just how many are singing at the same time – at just one point halfway between Crail and the airfield I counted at least 6, but maybe as many as 10, all singing high up in the sky. The wild bird mix and unharvested strip of winter wheat next door to Balcomie Caravan Park is still providing a great habitat for wintering buntings. I counted over 100 corn buntings and 30-40 yellowhammer there this morning. A really inspiring sight to show what a decent bit of set aside can do. The rape field next door (the big one which was planted with potatoes last year) had a herd of 12 roe deer in it. Apparently only one adult male, a few young from last year and the rest females.
I got a phone call from Chris Broome first thing this morning to tell me that there was a young otter wandering around Pinkerton. He had heard a plaintiff whistling call at 5 this morning which he knew but couldn’t place directly. A bit later when he saw an ottery shape shuffling through his front garden the penny dropped. It was a young otter, about half grown, clearly lost and a bit distressed, calling for its mother. I was on my bike and over at Pinkerton with Chris in less than five minutes. We could hear the otter calling – not particularly loud, but a piercing peep every few seconds – and we followed it into his neighbour’s garden (no need to disturb the neighbours because it was Pinkerton, and a holiday home…). I had a glimpse of something moving into the Pinkerton triangle (our first record of otter on our new bit of community land!). Chris and I hadn’t meant to chase it there but it did make sense to move the otter back towards the shore and away from the roads. Being hit by a car is pretty much the major source of mortality for otters (and badgers and foxes and hedgehogs). The otter then worked its way along the top of the cliff at Roome Bay and then down the path towards Sauchope, frightening a spaniel on the way. The spaniel’s owner was unsure what it was and I told her it was a young otter we were trying to shepherd out of trouble. “I didn’t think they were that big” she said, and I explained it was a young one, and an adult would easily be twice the size! This otter was about 80 cm long, maybe a bit larger, although a good bit of this is was its thick, long tail.
I followed the otter down to Sauchope and along the top of the shore to make sure it made it safely out of town. The otter kept calling to try to refind its mother, but this was unlikely to come for it in a busy place, so pointing the young otter well away from Crail seemed a good idea. Initially it wasn’t very happy about me walking with it, and on one occasion when I got within a few meters of it, it rolled on to its back and faced me, leaping forward slightly with a hiss and an open mouth showing its rows of dagger like teeth (you need good teeth for slippery fish). I got the message and backed off. It may have been lost but it wasn’t helpless and appeared fat, strong and healthy. Young otters stay with their mothers for a year. Separations between mother and young happen accidentally during this long care period and they get back together by calling to each other. I was reasonably hopeful that given time and space this one would be found by its mother.
I kept pace with the otter as it progressed through the caravan park, with the otter becoming less and less worried about me. It then suddenly stopped and looked at me directly and started running towards me. My initial reaction was to run away – quite instinctive as this mini-terrier sized animal raced at me. I stopped myself, thinking how ridiculous I was being, and turned around. The otter kept coming straight at me, stopping at my feet. It put its front legs on my shoes, which it sniffed for a little while before looking straight up at me and in the eye as if to say – “you are not my mother”. I watched in disbelief. I have been very close to wild otters before but only through windows or in hides, and they have never reacted to me except to move well away if they notice me. This time I was being watched closely, not the reverse. I felt strangely disappointed that I had been found wanting by the otter, with the ridiculous Ring of Bright Water thoughts that I couldn’t stop passing through my head – of adopting this young otter – being dashed almost as soon as I had them. The otter trotted off, with a more relaxed air, to ferret a bit under a bit of caravan decking, before continuing east towards Kilminning. I was left stunned. Time to go. I really couldn’t get a better wildlife experience than that and the otter was heading purposefully in the safest direction. I was so thrilled I stopped everyone I met on the way home to tell them about it. Otters in Crail, breeding otters near Crail, otter paws on my shoes!
It has been mild today in Crail, although when I went up to more exposed Carnbee it felt much colder. I was on the hunt for jack snipes. They are hit and miss on the Crail local patch during the winter but if you keep on tramping around soggy field corners, ditches or wetland edges, sooner or later one will pop up. It just depends on how much effort you put into walking in the kind of boggy areas that any sensible person would avoid. There were a couple along the edge of the reservoir, taking off a couple of meters away from me and making a low silent flight before landing a bit further along, completely disappearing again. Seeing a jack snipe on the ground is a rare occurrence – they are incredibly well camouflaged and they crouch motionless when you are near or move with slow jerks which doesn’t catch the eye when you are further away. Plus they are usually in thick grassy or boggy vegetation so would be invisible even if they were having a party. But jack snipe are commoner than you think: any snipe that pops up at your feet, doesn’t call and that lands nearby is almost certainly a jack snipe even if you only glimpse it (to find them closest to Crail, look out for them on the boggy bit of the coastal path by the salmon bothy at West Braes).
Carnbee also had its usual water birds: over 75 teal and the same number of wigeon, but few mallards, tufted ducks or goldeneye this visit. I didn’t see the velvet scoter which has been resident more or less since Christmas. There was a velvet scoter reported at Cameron Reservoir on the 30th Jan, and this afternoon the Carnbee velvet scoter was back. I wonder if it is commuting between the two reservoirs – Cameron is only 6 kilometers from Carnbee and would be easily visible to a duck flying over Kellie Law behind Carnbee. The tufted duck at Carnbee certainly commute between Gillingshead reservoir and probably much further afield: their numbers fluctuate at Carnbee on a daily basis. If only the smews would just take a day trip to Carnbee to get themselves onto the Crail patch list.
The local shelducks are back. I saw my first couple at Balcomie last weekend, and then another bird at Fife Ness today. They haven’t really been anywhere except congregating for the winter at nearby estuaries like the Eden, Tyninghame or Aberlady. Now they are starting to spread along the shore to stake out breeding territories. The adults come back first and then defend them against younger birds that try to breed nearby. Shelducks are exceptions to the colonial nesting rule. Well spaced out breeders have higher nesting success than colonial nesters. Usually breeding in a colony is the better option, particularly when the species can defend itself. Shelducks are very vigorous nest defenders, occasionally even killing potential nestling predators like skuas. But they probably can’t do much against foxes, so an isolated and hidden nest down a rabbit burrow might escape notice in the way that would be impossible in a colony. Sometimes you find a shelduck pair hundreds of meters from the shore breeding in a sandy field and these nests would be hard to find by any predator making a systematic search for a shelduck nest. Shelducks are conspicuous but their underground nests aren’t, so as long as a pair uses an unpredictable site and minimizes their comings and goings then they have a good chance of escaping detection. But these inland nesting pairs then have the problem of walking their chicks to the shore so they can feed, and this must expose the ducklings to an additional hazard that will draw down some of the advantage of the hidden nest site. Some years the local birds don’t hatch any chicks, but some years they do, and then usually one or two make it to fledging. On average a pair might produce one young surviving to the winter a year, and they have a typical lifespan of about 10 years. This should mean that populations are increasing (a shelduck pair only needs to have 3 surviving ducklings in a lifetime for the population to grow). But shelduck populations are decreasing slightly in the UK so the difference must be made up by lots of the fledged juveniles dying in their first winter before they become adults, or some of the adults don’t breed every year.
Wild Crail 