Nae Tae Shabby Fae Glasgae

Happy New Year everyone, after a blogging free December on my part. It seems that wherever I end up living, there’s always some reasonably decent birds to entertain. It hadn’t really occurred to me when I first moved down to Glasgow that I would see anything noteworthy in and around my flat. Well, think again, Joe.

Outside of uni terms, I can nowadays be found either hammering the marsh down at the beloved Costessey Private Estate, or more commonly in my flat here in Kelvinside, inner city Glasgow. As it happens, the flat is situated just across the road from the River Kelvin and Botanic Gardens (see below). As I am on the third floor, and happen to live in the flat that is literally beside the western entrance into the Botanic Gardens, I have a living room which gives a tree-height, panoramic view of the west end from our windows, and looks right onto the canopies of the Botanics.

A few passerines sift through the trees closest to the window: as I write this at 3:40pm a party of Long-tailed Tits are feeding, completely oblivious of me, within 15ft of the window. In the past few months I’ve also had these views of Bullfinch, Siskin, Great Spotted Woodpecker, roving groups of Fieldfare, Redwing and Mistle Thrushes from the table I am sitting at. It’s a stroke of luck that the views from the living room allows for this intimacy, this exploration into the clandestine, arboreal lives of urban passerines, especially when the trees are bare at this time of year. Just across the hall in the kitchen, I’ve had a flyover Cormorant, two Buzzards, Sparrowhawk and calling Tawny Owl since we’ve moved down. It’s a consoling feeling to have seen these species just sitting around in the flat. Whilst my old house back in Aberdeen was a magnet for Waxwings in winter and heralded the odd commoner Phyllosc, the Glasgow flat beats it on birding quality, ironic considering that the former area utterly trounces Clyde for birds. Having the River Kelvin and the Botanics at hand more or less as soon as you reach ground level helps, of course.

Talking of ground level, I had more than a bit of a surprise as I went downstairs to take the rubbish out before breakfast this morning. Literally as the the debris dropped from my hands with a resounding thud into the depths of the stinking bin, a single unmistakably loud, demented squawk emanated from close by. It takes some volume and attitude to be louder than a load of rubbish hitting a metal surface. What?! It couldn’t be? Surely I was kidding myself that I’d just heard this outside my Glasgow flat? But no. The shrieking call continued to get louder and louder, as I scanned the skies, waiting for the pesky Psittacula to give itself up. My second record of Buzzard for the flat flew over. In pursuit was an adult Ring-necked Parakeet, raucous and stupendous as you like, shrieking its bonse off. Dad and I followed this surreal duo down the street, the Parakeet relentlessly harrying the beleaguered Buteo. The squawking softened and the birds became dots as they headed quickly west over Kelvinside Academy and were lost to view.

Now, that was seriously strange. What this bird was doing in Scotland, let alone flying over my Glasgow flat, bewilders me. I am aware that a couple of rogue individuals have frequented the Crail and Bulmullo area in the east coast of Fife over the years, but in a Scottish context Ring-necked Parakeets occurrences are really pretty unprecedented. Whether a genuinely dispersing feral bird from the London population or an escape, this is a species that I’d never expect to see in Scotland. A little research on Birdguides does show that lone Ring-necked Parakeets have been seen sporadically in and around Glasgow over the last five years, including last year. Still, pretty ridiculous though: definitely the most interesting species to have graced the area since I’ve moved down: things may well not get much better for us here. Not often that a personal Scottish first flies over your house.

Inspired, I headed for a walk around the Botanics and the River Kelvin. The quickest way to walk to my flat is through the Botanics, normally through a route which cuts through the actual gardens themselves, so whenever I want to get to and from home I have to go via it. Sometimes I take a diversion and walk up from the Kibble Palace towards Maryhill along the Kelvin, which holds typical river species but in the spring looks promising for a few warblers in the surrounding cover. In the summer I had a family of Grey Wagtails along the Kelvin, but the river has really come to life this winter. Just before my uni exams in December, I watched a singing Dipper down to 10ft as I sat on a bench reading Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Presumably the same bird was present again today, although not so forthcoming. A short walk from the flat to one of a few footbridges over the Kelvin continually produces views down to 15ft of wintering Goosander amongst the local Mallards at this time of year. 6 (3 pairs) were present today: I intend get down there with the DSLR at some point in the next couple of days. To cap things off today, a piping Kingfisher flew downstream at Maryhill, landing and fishing about 10ft away from me: azure and orange glinting in the crisp light. As I attempted to get a picture on my phone, without bins or camera at hand, the bird scuttled southwards. Urban patch gold.

the River Kelvin towards Maryhill in July 2013, a couple of minutes walk from the flat. Photo courtesy of Liv Nichols

Nae tae shabby fae glasgae, ye ken? The beauty of it is that without any optics at hand and without any actual proper birding, I’ve had all the aforementioned species here, part of a modest total of 41 species seen since we moved down in July 2013.  The perks of urban birding.

Thanks for reading,

Joseph

Duck Duo Keeps Up SW Scottish Form

I have always been a big fan of Anas, so what better yesterday than to score two of the finest looking duck sp. to reach British shores? We start with a certain drake Blue-winged Teal which has been present for a good while now on the eastern edge of Glasgow at Frankfield Loch. After starting south west Scottish birding last month with a bang at Saltcoats with two Balearic Shearwaters north, the opportunity to see what must be my most desired vagrant duck in British waters, and the possibility to keep the good birding form in the area going, was not to be frowned upon.

Hence yesterday afternoon I made the very short pilgrimage to the loch, somewhat inconveniently situated on the edge of a Taylor Wimpey housing estate that was bustling with suburban people returning from their trips to the shops. This made peaceful viewing a bit of an issue, but the distance from the bird in question was not a problem due to the fairly compact size of the loch. It took no more than a minute to locate the gorgeous drake Blue-winged Teal, somnolent as it roosted determinedly amongst numerous Eurasian Teal. Aesthetically, I had expected the Anas discors to be abysmal. Thus when noting its well developed white facial crescent and its near complete moult (albeit apart from some dinginess around the flanks), I was a delighted man. It was in fine fettle, quite unlike the Teals beside it whose moult was considerably further behind this Nearctic gem.

I had to make do for half an hour with admiring its intricately patterned, dark centred flanks. It was not letting me see its full face: with a bird of this beauty, full views are a must. Eventually, a Grey Heron disrupted the sleeping party and the bird in question took to the air, joining a group of Shoveler and thus easy to pick out. Here my first dazzling flash of sky blue wing coverts (which were verging on complete moult) and full facial views were had: it was a beautiful moment. The word ‘oooft’ impetuously escaped my lips. Euphoria ended as it landed slap bang in the middle of a sheet of golden mid-afternoon light, leaving it mostly silhouetted for a good 10 minutes as it mucked around with the Shoveler. It meandered away from the light, at which point I was able to appreciate full views of it feeding. This was a brief affair though: within a couple of minutes it found a muddy edge to rest and was back roosting once again. What a stupendous bird though, one of my most wanted species in the UK. If it sticks around into the winter I’ll be paying it another visit with my DSLR, wherever its Clyde escapades take it. I rarely mention lists nowadays, but I can say now that this puts me within one of 300 species in the UK. This realization was made when I decided to look at and revise my British list for the first time this year. What will no. 300 be? The mind boggles (as if I really care!).

On the way back I stopped at an undisclosed site I had noticed previously whilst out and about in Glasgow, simply because I thought it looked good for wildfowl. I wasn’t expecting to see anything much at all, so was very surprised when I connected with a drake Ruddy Duck! I was exhilarated, delighting in the bird’s gleaming russet beauty for a good 15 minutes. Given the cull of this species, I had not seen a Ruddy Duck for two years. The cull has resulted in near extirpation of Ruddy Duck in a Scottish context, with previous strongholds in Fife and Aberdeenshire now ceasing to hold any birds whatsoever. In said counties, the species was once expected at certain sites annually. Now, seeing Ruddy Duck anywhere in Britain, let alone Scotland, is a rare and precious moment. Hence I am not releasing any information as to the location of this particular Ruddy Duck. In my eyes at least, it would be total injustice to put it on DEFRO, as much as I love White-headed Ducks.  There is a pun in there somewhere.

I think it’s fair to say my birding so far in SW Scotland has been very productive. Whether this is representative of the birding quality in the area as a whole, only time will tell. However, I expect that future birding here, especially around Glasgow, will be less productive – not that I am slagging the area. As it stands though, its showing its full birding colours.

Thanks for reading,

Joseph

A Taste Of The Med In The Ayr

Changes, changes changes!  Welcome to ‘Lothian Young Birder’, for one. I can’t be bothered getting round to changing my web address, so that will just have to remain ‘aberdeenshireyoungbirder’, even though that stage in my life and my birding is now sadly behind me. I write now from my new base in Glasgow with the knowledge that in just a few days time I will be off to university in Edinburgh for four years. This monumental change in my life will inevitably make birding a more irregular feature for me, especially this autumn, as I will have other more important priorities. Nonetheless though, the move does represent a new era in my birding: a new coast to work, a new patch to find. A whole new birding experience awaits. Exciting stuff. Hopefully at some point my first post from there will appear.

Alongside Lothian, occasional birding in and around Glasgow and SW Scotland will make up the entire component of my Scottish birding herein. My first taste of this came on Monday, and I am glad to say it began with a bang. On Sunday evening, after a day of rain and strong southwesterlies, the offer was put on the table for a seawatch at Saltcoats for the next day, a last bit of birding before concentrating the mind on uni.  Needless to say, I accepted. I hadn’t birded with Dad for a while, and any opportunity to kick off a new era of birding in SW Scotland was inevitably going to be taken.

So on Monday afternoon, we struggled our way through the chaotic mass of cars along the M8 and wriggled our way south-westwards through the rolling pastures of North Ayrshire and out the other side to Saltcoats. Saltcoats itself is a weathered, flat town: its modest, undecorative houses hardened by rain, by chill, by storm. Yet its seafront offered an escape from that dreariness. Rising from the boundless sea, is the conical shaped island of Ailsa Craig. It has no width, no bulk to it. It merely sticks heavenwards, volcano like from the depths of the Firth of Clyde. A mile or two to the north, the mountainous Isle of Arran, where I went as a younger child, stretches for a few miles from north to south. Throughout the seawatch, a shaft of golden sunlight illuminated the two islands and lined the sea in the foreground as we stood several miles off under a static sheet of opaque grey cloud.

seawatching off Saltcoats (2/9/13) – Arran is covered by cloud at this point

I felt an inherent desire to be out to sea, to get closer to the islands, to be nearer the teeming masses of Manx Shearwaters that were banking off Ailsa Craig. 400+ Manxies were out there over a two hour period, many just milling about endlessly. They were all miles off, but their starkly demarcated uppers and unders glinted through the scope even then, as they moved in impeccable flamboyant formation sometimes in groups of 100 or more.

The forecast had been for a strong South-westerly, as there had been in Glasgow that morning. At Saltcoats however there was little to no wind, hence the sea was flat as a millpond and seabird passage as a whole was really pretty stagnant whilst we were there. There was barely anything else passing through and little to entertain apart from the Manxies, which were very distant anyway.

An hour and a half passed and we hadn’t really had anything else of note. I was starting to feel as if it may be time to give up the ghost and return when conditions were prime.  At this point I finally picked something up about half way out towards Ailsa Craig, considerably closer than any of the Manxies. It was clear that it was a shearwater sp., but it appeared to be migrating low and determinedly northwards on loose, unpowerful wingbeats with very little shearing involved whatsoever; unlike the over elaborate shearing of the milling Manxies in the distant background. The laboured flight action alone was enough for me to flag the bird up as interesting and to alert Dad that it was not a Manx, as it headed towards the southern tip of Arran. Whacking the zoom up to 60x on the scope for closer examination revealed a pot-bellied, rotund shearwater with broad wings that was smaller and shorter-winged than Sooty, exhibiting chocolate brown upperparts and no white flank patch whatsoever. It sheared tamely a few times, showing clear brown patches on its axiliaries and dark undertail coverts, contrasting with its off white underwing and belly.

I was well aware by this point that I was on a Balearic Shearwater! On the bird consistently, I shouted across to Dad, who still hadn’t got it, largely due to the fact that my excitement was causing me to give truly dire directions! Eventually he got on to it as it passed the northern tip of Arran, and we were both able to manage prolonged views as it chugged its way northwards. Eventually, after a couple of minutes consistent views on my part, it was lost to view. Score! Not only was this a long overdue lifer for me, but what was far more exhilirating was that we’d just had a Balearic Shearwater in Scottish waters. I had definitely not expected my first to be in Scotland: more so off typical sites in Cornwall or Dorset. Given how tricky they are country wide, this was a very valuable Scottish first for us both.

We decided to hang on for another twenty minutes on the off chance something else might pass through. A Red-throated Diver flew north after about 10 minutes. As I followed the diver, Dad called from out the blue: ‘another Balearic !’.  He was considerably better with his directions than I was, so I was able to pick up our second Balearic Shearwater of the day to the north of Arran, at about the same distance as the last bird, completely on its own and again heading northwards.  A fresher bird than the first with slightly less prominent axiliary patches and darker underparts, this individual was briefer given that it was only picked up late on, lost to view within 45 seconds. Fantastic!

looking northwards towards Ardrossan from Saltcoats

We were starting to feel increasingly peckish so thus called it a day just afterwards, leaving the lure of the islands behind us. It had been a bit of a shearwater fest. Whilst it was quiet as a whole passage wise on Monday, the experience reminds me how much I have yearned for decent seawatching as an east coast birder. On my first bit of seawatching and indeed birding in the Clyde area, it has come up with the goods with a UK bogey and a very valuable personal Scottish first. An immensely enjoyable afternoon and start to my birding in this area; I am very much looking forward to returning in prime conditions. Long-tailed Skuas galore? Yes please!!

Thanks for reading,

Joseph