Blow the Wind Southerly

4/07/10

The only time we have a visit from Swifts seems to coincide with rough weather, but lunchtime today was exceptional. Over a half hour period a flock congregated in front of the house, over the field of uncut silage and our garden. They flew from ground level to many hundreds of feet above, in spite of the wind and rain. It was impossible to make an accurate count of their numbers, but a figure of one hundred would not seem excessive. Incidentally, on my last trip north to Strathbeg there was a flock of well over 100 Swifts flying above the loch. If this had not been recorded in the logbook I might never have noticed them.

The other event which interrupted my cheese and lettuce sarnie was the arrival of a Dark Green Fritillary. That’s a butterfly by the way, not a bird. Butterflies and moths have always been a source of interest to me, but not sufficiently to actually get around to identifying any of them apart from the few common ones that everybody is familiar with. So, I am fairly confident that this was a first for the garden. It was feeding on a bunch of knapweed. The sun is now shining again and the wind has moved a little more into the west.

Going back a couple of days now, I had a spell of sea watching at Girdleness. The wind was southerly, but no more than a brisk breeze. In the lee of the foghorn it was quite pleasant. There was plenty of activity, auks in lines going north and south, Gannets in strings mostly going south, and then what I had been hoping for, a Manx Shearwater cutting through the white topped wave-crests, and disappearing into the troughs. I had expected more of them, but had to be content with the one. I moved along to the car park at Greyhope Bay where I continued watching from the car as I was having lunch. It was much the same as at the foghorn, but this time with the addition of a dark- phase Arctic Skua dashing northwards, and taking time out to harass some of the terns feeding in the bay. Soon it was gone from view, and I too set off for Newburgh.

Apart from the somewhat surreal sight of three Spoonbills at the Snub (there have been four seen there) there was not a lot of interest, so I returned south again, to have a look at the scoter flock at Blackdog. The light was good, but the sea was choppy. There were scoters aplenty, but singling out anything from the hundreds of Common Scoters was going to be hard. At the fourth time of passing the ‘scope along the flock, I finally picked out two Surf Scoters, with their white nape patches and ridiculous bulbous bills. That was a happy addition to my year list and with that I began to head for home, braving the road-works and diversions that have sprung up across the region.