White-tailed Eagle

White-tailed Eagle has been on the wish list for sometime but I couldn't really justify all that mileage for one bird. Fortunately a recent holiday had us stopping off at Portree on Skye and a trip out on the local boat Stardust gave me the views I had been hoping for.

Three birds were seen, the first two being a pair nesting on the cliffs a couple of miles south of Loch Portree. The views were a bit distant but we had the female sitting close to the nest and the male perched up about fifty metres away.

Distant shot of female with nest below left

Male close by

Further along the coast we had a second female

Second female, heavily blinged - tags, rings, and backpack transmitter

Second female swooping for fish

Second female with fish and state of the art backpack!!!

Heading over to Raasay

So where is the picture of the eagle snatching the fish from the water? - I didn't take it. You have the choice, watch the action or get the picture and I didn't want to miss seeing the eagle close up. Next time I will go for the picture.


Moving from one introduced species to another - the Golden Pheasants on Tresco. I doubt that there are any self sustaining populations left in the UK but the bird is still on the list so in theory still countable. On Tresco it is not really hard to find. There are a good number of un-ringed free to fly birds wandering around and they have little fear of humans.

Tresco is a privately owned fiefdom so I am not sure that the usual rules re the ringing of released birds apply and most sources suggest the numbers are regularly topped up with new birds.

It is a stunning bird to look at and as we were visiting the Abbey Gardens I was set on getting a picture. Slight problem, they have either had an argument with a lawn mower or the moult is in progress. Not exactly the picture I was looking for.

Golden Pheasnt in moult

The story of their arrival on Tresco is an interesting one. An exhibition of figureheads from wrecked ships had one for the tea clipper the Friar Tuck. In 1856 this ship was swept onto rocks whilst sheltering from a gale in St Marys Roads. Despite the best efforts of the customs men, large quantities of tea were acquired by the islanders  but it was also said to be carrying Chinese Pheasants which found their way onto Tresco.

If true it must have been a self sustaining population for a good period of time.



Other birds seen on my travels

Black Guillemot

Manx Shearwater

Razor Bill

Eider 

Gannet

Common Guillemot

Hooded Crow

I also picked up Shag and Dipper but couldn't get a decent picture of either. Oh! and a hint for other bird photographers - you don't have to chase the birds. Use field craft, stay in cover, and wait for the bird to come to you.

Should have spent more time birding!

Corn Bunting

I failed to connect with a Corn Bunting last year, even though we had a couple of trips out towards the end of the year where it was the main target. I am not sure if it was a bad year for them or if they are disappearing from the local strongholds. More likely it was just incompetence on my part.

Two trips looking for them again this year, one at the Burgh and the other around the Steyning Bowl/ Nomans Land areas, have also drawn a blank. So today, when Short-eared Owls were the main target, it was a real bonus to find a Corn Bunting even if it was the only one we saw.

Corn Bunting

Better still, I had to close about 100 metres to get close enough for a picture and the bird waited patiently for me to get there and then to take the usual twenty or thirty near identical pictures. I wish all birds were so cooperative.

Half way there and a safety shot just in case it takes off

A slight variation in the pose!

The day had not started too well. We visited Pagham North Wall. There were thousands of birds out on the mudflats but nothing on the Breech Pool and nothing close enough to photograph. Selsey Bill was devoid of birds although there had been a few through earlier in the day.

A trip to Apuldram had given us sight of a lot of Yellowhammers in the barley field north of the horse paddock. They were impossible to count but there was certainly a lot of action. We wasted half an hour trying to get a picture but the results were a bit disappointing. Perhaps a hide and a bit of patience would deliver better results but I suspect you would just get a queue of dog walkers asking what you were doing.

Running out of ideas we headed up to the Burgh for a raptor watch, only to find tractors and muck spreaders busy at work in front of the viewpoint. Dave suggested a walk round to the dew pond to look for Short-eared Owls. I wasn't too keen, I had only seen one sighting report all winter and the idea of home and a cup of tea was beginning to grow.

Fortunately Dave prevailed, I got my Corn Bunting, we saw at least three Short-eared Owls, and a possible although distant Hen Harrier.

Short-eared Owl

The Owls were not quite as obliging as the Corn Bunting. They gave a few reasonable fly-bys but the hoped for landing on a post just a few feet away did not happen.

Still, great fun to watch and to photograph, we just need to find a Barn Owl now.

It has been very quiet around the area for the past week or so. There was a juvenile Eider in Shoreham Harbour for a couple of days and there has been a rather sick and scrawny looking Red-necked Grebe on Brooklands Lake. The Eider was worth a photograph but as much as I would like a close up photograph of a Red-necked Grebe I think the Brooklands bird is best left in peace.

Juvenile Eider

Black Grouse

A week in the Cairngorm National Park and on the Moray and Nairn Coast gave us some excellent birding, with a couple of life ticks for me, but with very few photographs for the blog. The problem was the weather, it was just too good, warm sunny days, calm seas and virtually no wind. The sea ducks, that we had hoped to find sheltering in the coastal harbours, were long gone or were far out to sea and the geese also seemed to be starting their migration early.

We did manage to see one hundred and sixteen different species over the week. That included  White-billed Diver, Black Grouse, Crested Tit, Twite, American Wigeon, Green-winged Teal, Ptarmigan, Iceland Gull, and Surf Scoter. However most were a long way off and the scopes got more use than the cameras. 

The notable missing bird for the week was the Snow Bunting, which is normally present either on the coastal sand dunes or around the car park at the Cairngorm ski lifts. We could not find them anywhere although there was one reported the day after we left.

Fortunately we had stopped off at Seahouses Harbour before we crossed into Scotland and the Eider we found there proved to be the only close encounter we had with sea ducks all week.

Eider

Female Eider

The harbour also had a few Great Black-backed Gulls, this one with the remains of a crab.

Great Black-backed Gull and crab

First stop in Scotland was at Musselburgh. Lots of birds including Velvet Scoter, Long-tailed Ducks, Goldeneye, and Bar-tailed Godwits but no Surf Scoter that we could see and no opportunities for photographs. So it was onwards to our base for the week at the Grant Arms Hotel at Grantown on Spey.



It was nice to find the Black Grouse. This is a bird I used to see regularly when I was out walking on the hills, but it seems to be a lot rarer these days. This is  actually the first I have seen since I started keeping records four years ago. The pictures are poor but this is not a bird that is easy to approach when out in the open. We did not want to spook them so we took our pictures at a distance, hence the massive crop, and left them in peace.

By contrast the Red Grouse is a much easier bird to photograph. These shots were taken at Lochindorb where the birds were close by the road.

The last of our target birds in the Grouse family was the Ptarmigan. Dismissing the soft option of the Cairngorm Funicular we trudged up the route to the northern corries. Last year we had seen a number of birds around there but this year, with the snow line higher, we found only one. Dave heard it calling and after a search he found it, distant, on the other side of a deep snowfield. Last year the birds came close but this one was staying put, happily feeding on the heather shoots.

Ptarmigan

They are a great bird to find, the walk may have been hard work but the celebratory beer that evening tasted all the better for it.

We had two visits and spent about a day and a half looking for Eagles in the Findhorn Valley. Slim pickings is probably the best description for the birds found. On the first visit we had one decent flyby from a juvenile Golden Eagle from which I failed to get any decent pictures. My best efforts are shown below.

There were a couple of other distant views of Golden Eagles and one possible sighting of a White-tailed Eagle but it was to far off to be able to confirm the identification.

The shot below shows the closest we got on the second visit.

It's taken using a 500mm lens and 1.4 extender with the birds at least a mile away. Blown up a bit bigger you can identify the lower bird as a juvenile Golden Eagle. The upper bird, Dave identified using his scope, as a peregrine which was one of a pair harassing the eagle.

There were Dippers in the river but they did not show for a picture so to keep me occupied I ended up photographing a Mistle Thrush and a Pied Wagtail that kept us company on our vigil and a couple of the local Buzzards.

Not quiet as tuneful as a Song Thrush but better than nothing

Pied Wagtail

 

Buzzard

Buzzard

More to follow in part two of the blog headed as Crested Tits.

Harlequin Duck

Monday 9th March

Monday and the weather looked far from promising for birding. A deep low was coming in and winds of eighty to ninety miles per hour were promised with a strong possibility of snow. But we had to get to Aberdeen.

For the weeks before we travelled to Scotland we had been monitoring the Harlequin Duck in Seaton Park. It was to be one of our key targets for the holiday. Then the week before we travelled it disappeared. We assumed that with the weather warming up (a bit) the bird had left and we had given up hope of seeing it.

I don't know where it had been for the previous seven days but Sunday night a report reappeared on Bird Alert and Monday morning we were heading for Aberdeen, whatever the weather had to offer.

First winter drake Harlequin Duck

From Seaton park we walked up the river to where the duck had last been reported but could not find any sign of it. Fortunately heading in the opposite direction we soon came across a small dark duck swimming with a couple of Mallards and we quickly confirmed it as the Harlequin.

It's a duck of fast flowing rivers that is rarely seen in the UK and there are only eighteen accepted sightings on record. It would usually be resident and breeding in Iceland and Greenland.

A dark duck, in dark water, under dark trees, in low light levels, does not make for brilliant picture opportunities, particularly as it favours fast flowing water giving a lot of movement, but in the end I got three decent pictures out of the forty or so I took.

We headed back around the coast avoiding the high roads. The Ythan Estuary looked a great place for birding but when we opened the car door to take a look we saw Goosander, Greenshanks and other birds disappearing into the distance. Perhaps it's still a little too close to the shooting season.

Distant shot of the Greenshank

Coming back along the coast we visited Macduff, Banff, Buckie, and Spey Bay. Despite the gale force winds the ducks were still out on the sea although we did find a couple of Eider in Banff harbour and a Shag just outside Macduff harbour.

Eider - water still rough inside the harbour walls

Shag - scaring all the little children

A great days birding despite the gale force winds

Twite

Sunday 8th March

Early Sunday morning and we headed over the hills towards the Moray and Nairn coast to look for Divers and Sea Ducks. We spotted a few Red Grouse on the way but with the sun barely up it was not worth stopping. There were plenty of the ducks just off the coast but the divers were in short supply. I think we must have been a couple of weeks late as we only managed to see one Red-throated Diver all day.

Starting at Nairn Pier we found Oystercatchers, Knot , Curlew, Turnstones and then crossing the river roosting Redshank and a Grey Wagtail.

Redshank

Moving east, the tide was out when we got to Findhorn Bay. There were a good number of waders out on the mud but the real find was a mixed flock of Linnets and Twite close to the village. I know the difference between the two but spotting individual birds in a mobile and fast moving flock was hard work. Once I was sure that I had a yellow billed  Twite safely in the camera I resorted to photographing anything that offered a good picture opportunity with the intention of sorting them all out later.

First the Linnets, throat streaked, grey bill, greyish head with pale patches above and below the eye, strong white edges to tail, male with red just starting to show on its breast.

The Twite are more of a buff colour with no grey on the head, bills are yellow outside the breeding season, there is no streaking on the throat, and the male has pink on the rump.

Twite foraging along the tide line

Head and body same uniform buff colour

No streaking on throat

No pale patches above and below eye

Lacking strong white edges to tail

Male Twite showing pink on the rump

We checked out the harbours along the coast hoping that the high winds would drive some of the ducks into shelter but we could not find any. The closest views were found at Burgh Head where Common Scoter, Red-breasted Merganser, Eider, Long-tailed Ducks, and Gannet were all present as well as a Rock Pipet and Hooded Crow. Burgh Head also had the advantage of being sheltered from the bitterly cold wind.

Long-tailed Ducks

Eider

After a brew we moved on to Lossiemouth. There was nothing to look at in the harbour but the East Beach and estuary area had a few birds and we were able to sit in the car and observe them in comfort. It looked like the usual gulls, Redshank and Widgeon with a few Bar-tailed Godwits, until Dave spotted a small flock of Snowbuntings on the opposite beach.

A great find but it meant that we had to walk round to the beach. The wind was still strong and bitterly cold, the sand was being blasted across the beach and to top it all we got caught in a rain squall just as we reached the birds. Still once it cleared we had great views of the Snow Buntings and were able to get a few pictures.

Even the Snow Bunting were trying to shelter from the wind

With the day drawing to a close we called in at a hide on Loch Spynie. It was in a great spot sheltered from the wind with good views out over the loch and lots of feeders around it to attract the small birds and Red Squirrels.

On the drive back along the coast we finally managed to connect with a small flock of Pink-footed Geese. It was a bit of a relief as we had been searching for them all day. Of course once you spot one they all come along and we had two more small flocks before we got home and flocks of thousands by the end of the holiday.