Migrants Galore And A Nice Passage Wader

Ah, its always pleasing when yet another fall takes place locally, whether it includes that scarcer migrant amongst many commoner migs or just the commoner stuff. A moderate south easterly wind on Friday and plenty of murk and mist was sure to cause a fall, I thought, so out my Dad and I went on the equally murky Saturday morning, starting our day checking the plantation at the Loch of Strathbeg, which had had a fall the previous morning. On the way down in the car through the track that takes you through towards the plantation, a Buzzard was perched on a fence post. We kept on sending it up, and it would move on slightly, before landing again and then very quickly taking off again. Eventually I managed to get a picture of it mid-take off - it wouldn't keep still! Not bad seeing that it was taken in the car.

Buzzard on road past Coralhill Farm, 9/10

To get to the plantation, a mile or more's walk is usually required from the village of St Combs' through many rough fields, but on taking the track down which I photographed the Buzzard, we cut off about half that walk, if not more. As soon as we parked up and got out the car, I was immediately on to two Robins, which was a good sign as we hadn't even reached the plantation yet, and they were most certainly migrants. Shortly after we started the walk down, I heard an odd call that I vaguely recognised, scanned the immediate field I was in, and saw two small passerines dip into some low lying dead vegetation not far in front of me. I proceeded to scan the area in search of them, and I couldn't quite believe my eyes! No sooner had I started checking the vegetation did I see a whole flock of Lapland Buntings feeding together! They kept themselves pretty well hidden, but to my astonishment, after close inspection I was able to count 19 Lapland Buntings in all! And to think that only a couple of weeks ago I had never seen Lapland Bunting before, when I was now watching 19 of them only 25ft or so away from me! I started to get the camera equipment out, and did so efficiently, but it was very difficult to get photos due to the vegetation not allowing for great views. I tried to get a bit closer to maximise my chances, but as I did so I inevitably sent the whole flock up. It was a magnificent sight to see these lovely little passerines take to the air together, calling as they flew and wheeling round several times. Eventually they disappeared from view. Magical stuff!

On approaching the plantation, there was the immediate impression of a fall. Scanning a single bush quickly produced a single Blackcap and 2 Robins, and in the trees above Song Thrushes and Blackbirds were regularly bombing it from one tree to the next. We decided we'd check the fringes of the plantation before going further in, and in doing so it also become apparent that Goldcrests were present en masse when we alighted on a whole group of them, and with the presence of lots of Goldcrests, there was a good chance of a Yellow-browed Warbler amongst them, especially when two had been seen in the plantation the previous day. Everywhere you looked, there were migrants, and our bins were pretty much consistently up trying to check them as they flitted between tree tops. Almost the entire group of the smaller passerines that we were on were Goldcrests, with maybe 12 or so of them there alone but for a milli-second my Dad thought he saw the back of what could be a Yellow-browed Warbler disappearing from view as the whole Goldcrest group moved away from the fringes of the plantation and went slightly further in.

Seeing that my Dad had possibly had a Yellow-browed Warbler already, it seemed quite a wise idea to depart from him and venture into the plantation slightly at the nearest oppurtunity as the Goldcrest flock hadn't gone far. Fairly quickly, I left him to check the fringes and headed into the plantation itself. I soon was around the Goldcrest flock, which I wasn't seeing particularly well but was hearing above me - a cacophony of high-pitched monotone calls. I craned my neck as I got onto several of them up high in the trees, but there were no other smaller passerines amongst the higher birds, and craning the neck got painful after a while. Other Goldcrests and several Song Thrushes were keeping to the vegetation lower down, but no sign of anything other than this until I got onto the back of a plump, greeny coloured passerine; a warbler. I waited for it to turn round, and to my absolute delight I was presented with a Phyllosc with a whacking great yellow supercilium, 100% a Yellow-browed Warbler! I relished the two second view I got of this beautiful bird as it sat itself on a tree stump, before it flew and moved further into the plantation. This was fantastic, and confirmed that the possible back of YBW my Dad had had minutes earlier was indeed what he thought it was. An absolute cracker, and only my third ever sighting of this lovely species!

After a couple of more minutes of scanning the immediate area that I was in, I decided I'd catch up with Dad and give him the news. I did so, and he was happy to hear that I had seen it and confirmed the sighting previous to that. He hadn't had much on the fringes apart from more Goldcrests, so we both headed a lot further into the plantation We spent over a couple of hours in the plantation, as there was so much to do, and we managed to get some very nice totals of commoner thrushes, warblers and such like (see below). About half way through our check was one of the most productive periods, with one little area producing 5 Chiffchaffs, 2 Blackcaps, a migrant Treecreeper and a split second views of a cracking female Redstart. Shortly afterwards there was a bit more quality again, when, to my frustration, my Dad got very brief views of a Yellow-browed Warbler amongst a couple of Chiffchaffs, which I missed by mere seconds. Whether this was the same bird that I had seen earlier or a different one it is hard to tell, so I would put it down to one or two Yellow-browed Warblers that we saw. At several points Yellow-browed Warbler was heard as well - a disyllabic, drawn out, high-pitched and surprisingly loud 'tseeweeeet', very distinctive and easily told from the monosyllabic, lower-pitched call of the Chiffchaff - so it may well have been that there was 2. Not very long afterwards, at a point where my Dad and I were both together, we were alerted by the call of Lapland Bunting yet again, this time from above the plantation. I was astonished when I had seen the 19 together, but when I looked up this time I was even more gob-smacked. A total of 31 Lapland Buntings were flying over the plantation, wheeling round and calling regularly a few times before eventually going out of view! I was completely taken aback by this, as this was a massive total and something I wasn't expecting by any means! I am pretty sure that the group would have included the same 19 I had seen earlier, but there is the outside possibility it was a second, seperate flock.... It is hard to tell! Really, even though the abundance of commoner migrants was exciting in itself, it was the Yellow-browed Warbler and the Lapland Bunting numbers that were the highlights of the check for me. It was just astonishing to see so many of the latter together, it really was! We met one of the wardens whilst in there, and told him of our totals. So, a fantastic trip to the plantation that was absolutely teeming with birds. Here are the mig totals in the plantation:

75+ Goldcrests, 50+ Robins, 31 Lapland Buntings, 25+ Song Thrush, 20+ Blackbirds, 7+ Chiffchaff, 5+ Blackcap, 5+ Redwing, 2 Willow Warbler, 1 Redstart, 1 Treecreeper 1 Fieldfare, at least one (possibly two) Yellow-browed Warblers.

On the way back to the car at around 2:30pm a text came through of a possible Blyth's Reed Warbler at Rattray Head, just a few miles south of Strathbeg. In getting that report, we headed straight down there to find a good number of birders with their eyes on a particular bush. It occured that most of the more important birders in Aberdeenshire (County Bird Recorder etc) were there, and they immediately told us 'Sorry to send you on a wild goose chase, but its a Reed'. Oh dear! I did see the Reed Warbler, only my second of this species for North-East Scotland (any Acro is notable here!). I must say I could see how it looked strange, it was noticeably paler than most Reeds I've seen and seemed to have a shorter primary projection tha your average Reed. I cannot, however, be bothered to go into the factors to why it was re-identified as Reed, that's slightly beyond me! Also in the bushes here there were many Robins and Goldcrests like at the plantation. Oh well, Reed Warbler was a nice bird for the day as it was. We then headed to check the pools at Strathbeg itself. Nothing much at all was going on here, with 19 Dunlins and 2 Greenshanks being the only things providing any sort of interest, plus several hundred Wigeons and Pink-footed Geese. The final stop of the day was at Cairnbulg Beach, just 5 or 6 miles north of Strathbeg. There had been a Little Stint a couple of days ago here, a bird I was yet to see for the year and was keen to catch up on. After about 10 minutes or so of looking, there it was amongst a group of 40 Dunlins, a cracking juvenile Little Stint. Fantastic views were obtained of it through the Swarovski, and it was a relief to see one for the year at last. This was a very nice end to what, retrospectively, was a very good day's birding. Unfortunately no other photos were taken, as the Little Stint was seen in poor and fading light, and the passerines at the plantation were just too mobile for photos!

The next time I post I will have spent 5 days on Fair Isle and two days twitching in Shetland. What I see is down to the luck of the draw, but one things for sure is that I am excited! Tune in next time for a trip report.

ATB,

Joseph

Birthday Birding (28/8/10)

Saturday 28th August, one day after my sixteenth birthday and a fairly decent date for birds, how could the thought of going out birding then not pass through my mind? It certainly did pass through my mind, and that morning I found myself out on a full day's birding, and was fortunate enough to meet local birder Andrew Whitehouse at the Ythan and spend the day birding with him. Unfortunately, and slightly to my surprise, a majority of the day wasn't awfully productive. A routine check of most of the Ythan (including the Collieston area) produced very few passage waders (e.g. no Ruff, Blackwits, etc.) at all, and a single Osprey and a couple of Greenshanks were probably the most notable birds. Off Collieston a few Arctic Skuas and a Bonxie did pass, and a Peregrine was nice to see too. The beauty of having a DSLR, however, is that even if it is quiet you can enjoy photographing the commoner species, and I was able to do so in the Ythan area. See below for my photos whilst I was there:

Lapwing, Inches Point, Ythan Estuary (28/8)

Mallards, nr Slains Pool, Ythan area (28/8)

This Osprey flew high over our heads! (28/8)

So overall the Ythan was rather disappointing, and we ended up going to Strathbeg in the hope that it would be more productive and that I'd be able to catch up on Green Sandpiper for the year. It was more lively than the Ythan, but still wasn't that impressive in terms of passage wader counts - 8 Ruffs, 5 Greenshanks, 1 Black-tailed Godwits and 80 Golden Plovers, but no Green Sandpipers. Quite a few birds of prey were present on the reserve, each causing havoc amongst the waders. These included 2 Peregrines, a Marsh Harrier, and a Buzzard. I wasn't able to photograph the Marsh Harrier unfortunately, but I managed to capture the other two species - the Buzzard rather well, and the Peregrine rather poorly due to the speed which it was flying. On the way back from a check of Tower Pool Hide, I spotted a couple of rather obliging mig juvenile Whitethroats in a bush too....

Buzzard, Loch of Strathbeg (28/8)

Peregrine, Loch of Strathbeg (28/8)

Whitethroat, Loch of Strathbeg (28/8)

A Barred Warbler was present at Rattray Head last week, and we decided that we might as well go and have a look for it and anything else in the bushes down there, although we knew it was very likely to have gone. We did indeed and not surprisingly fail to find it, so we decided to have another check off the sea. We didn't have any success here either, with no skuas or shearwaters passing whatsoever. However about 10 of these lovely little birds were scuttling along the shoreline....

Sanderling, Rattray Head (28/8)

It was only at the end of the day that things started getting better for us. Now, I have a very bad history with Surf Scoters off Blackdog, an area of beach just 2 or so miles north of Aberdeen that annually holds 1-2 of this species. Put it this way, in the last 2 years I reckon I have tried upwards of 15 times to see these birds and I have failed every time! They are such a bugger to see, as they hang around with many hundreds of Common and Velvet Scoters, and whenever I have gone the Scoter flocks have always been very distant, scattered, and are often a mile down the coast at Murcar GC, where they are also seen (often I don't have time to go here as I visit in the evening). Having seen the conditions of the sea at Rattray, it seemed like a good idea to go to Blackdog and have another try for them, and with Andrew with us there was an extra pair of eyes. Arriving at Blackdog we found the sea completely still, the light reasonable, and the Scoter flock unusally close in. We went down to the dunes and duly started searching them, and I was over the moon when I heard Andrew say after a minute or so: I've got a Surfie in this closest flock'. My Dad caught onto it too, When he moved away from his scope to show me, I was immediately on to, after hundreds and hundreds of times trying to look for one, a drake Surf Scoter! Finally, I had seen one! After about 2 minutes of watching it I managed to lose it (probably because it had dived), but very soon afterwards Andrew called out again saying 'I've got another two'. He told us where they were, and indeed there was two others. These birds were far more distant, but were undoubtedly Surfies. It was fantastic, I had managed to get lucky with the closeness of the main flock, and I had been rewarded with 3 Surf Scoters. The most memorable views however were of the closest bird, which I managed to get facing towards the scope lens when a bit of sunshine broke through, illuminating the bird's weird but fantastic features brilliantly. It was a fantastic end to the day, and essentially the ideal birthday treat. Of course they were too far out to have any chance of photographing!

Thanks for reading, any comments or feedback is greatly welcomed!

Joseph