Normal Service Resumed

25/05/09

In the past week or so, I have completed three of my tetrad surveys, and very enjoyable it was too. There was nothing very unusual to record. By far the commonest bird around at this time of year is the Willow Warbler. Their incessant, but lovely, song almost drowns out every other bird, but one bird that managed to make itself heard above the general clamour was a Tawny Owl – in broad daylight too!

A visit to the Loch of Strathbeg produced a couple of sleepy Little Gulls in front of the visitor centre, and a family of Shelducks. It was a day of heavy thundery showers, so I opted out of the trek to the Tower Hide, in case I was trapped there in a downpour. I went to Rattray and sat out a hailstorm having lunch in the car. After it cleared, I took a stroll around the dunes and the garden, but found nothing of much interest. The thunder grumbled in the distance as another jet black cloud approached, so I headed off to the Ythan estuary. There was one flock of Sanderlings, Ringed Plovers and Turnstones, but most of the waders have gone, leaving only the Eiders and the Shelducks, the gulls and the terns. After much watching, I found a Little Tern, my second “little” year tick for the day.

On the way home, I diverted to Blackdog to have a look at the scoter flock. Once a shower had cleared, I could scan the flock in good light, on a calm sea. They were contained between the two ends of a perfect rainbow, and there must have been at least a thousand birds. The ebb tide kept dragging them northwards, so that they had to constantly fly south again in small groups. They were doing a lot of diving as well, so all in all it was a hard job trying to pick out any non-Common Scoter among them. There may well have been a velvet or a surf scoter there, but I didn’t see any.

Yesterday, I had a new experience. I joined up with the Angus and Dundee Bird Club, for an outing to Glen Esk and Loch Lee. It was nice to meet some new birders, and between us we accounted for about 50 species. A lot of patience was needed to pin down some very elusive Redstarts in the birch woods, but eventually we all saw both male and female birds. Our lunch stop at Tarfside allowed us to watch a couple of Spotted Flycatchers, my first positive sighting this year of this charismatic bird. The afternoon was spent walking to the head of Loch Lee, looking for Ring Ouzels. It took a while to locate them, but finally they could be heard calling high above us in the scree. A brief glimpse was all that some of us managed, before we had to head back.