June 29, 2005
Pigeon ethics and seabird city
Still no migrants to report, and fate is now starting to take an active interest in compounding my birding misery; every time the wind veers away from a northerly, the faint glimmer of hope I nurture for some migrants (hell, not even rarities – I’d settle for a Willow Warbler given I’ve still not seen one this year) flickers and reignites. Only to be smothered to a sullen smoulder by fate’s wilful interference. The wind did just that at the weekend, and lo! a new bird appeared amongst my chickens. Not, as first glance suggested, one of the local Rock Doves. No, far rarer than that. A racing pigeon, no less than a Blue Bar. (This last I am reliably informed by a man who Knows Pigeons). Heaven knows where the poor sod is from, but turning up in Shetland is a pretty impressive feat in itself given our isolation.
What’s certain is where he’s going to. Absolutely nowhere. Five days on, and he’s still hanging out with the hens, gorging himself on corn and layers pellets, and showing no signs of wanting to leave. Which poses a bit of an ethical dilemma – our local Rock Doves are unsullied, pure birds (unlike their bastard cousins the feral pigeons in the rest of the UK). There are precious few pure Rock Doves left these days. Should I be allowing what’s to all intents and purposes a feral pigeon to stay and eventually interbreed with the local Rock Doves? Or should Steps Be Taken?
Anyway, avoiding the issue seems like a good idea for now. Let’s change the subject… went out last week on a boat trip around Bressay and Noss with an important chap from the Scottish Executive. (This was work, mind you!)
We missed the Orcas that had been hunting seals there a few hours previously (as evinced by the seriously spooked seals that remained), but got up close and personal with the immense seabird colonies on the sandstone cliffs at Noss. Incredible stuff, Guillemots and Gannets jammed onto the tiniest of ledges and nooks, a constant stream of birds flying in and out…
On the sea, huge flocks of Guillemots and Puffins, and at the foot of the cliffs Bonxies (Great Skuas) patrolling for fallen or weakened birds. All life was here, and it was teeming. Our guide had a submarine ROV that he slipped into the water nearby, and a different world altogether came onto the screens – forests of kelp, fish cruising through the vivid green ribbons, and then deeper still crabs, Norway lobster, sea urchins and various sponges and other weirdy sea stuff I can’t remember the names for. I’m not much of a reporter!
Anyway, it was a bloody good few hours, and thoroughly recommended to anyone who’s visiting Shetland. Further details of the boat trips available are on Seabirds-and-seals.com
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June 22, 2005
Bee Orchid Gallery
An email on Monday in my inbox from S, determined to make me jealous as hell of the botanising he's been up to recently. The bastard! A suite of stunning macro shots of various forms of Bee Orchid - to quote S directly: "The forms are: typical apifera, bicolor, trollii, friburgensis, belgarum and
the bee-autiful chlorantha."
Bee-autiful?! I can't better that.
The idea was to make this a strictly Bee Orchid gallery, and save some other photos he kindly sent me for another day. However, one is just so good it demands a sneak preview - an alba Pyramidal Orchid. Phew!
So, once again huge thanks to S for letting me display these excellent photos. At some point I'll have to put some sort of photo-story of my own on here rather than relying on the generosity of others (you've been warned - my photos are likely to be significantly less inspiring than his!) - the Northern Marsh Orchids are just coming into flower here at long last, so there's some potential.
On the same subject, I stumbled across a website based predominantly in Hampshire that's well worth a look - another botanising birder! Some gorgeous orchid photo galleries. Check out Peter's Purple Pages in the kinks below.
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June 14, 2005
Breeding waders and the eternal optimist
Of course, the last entry proved to be a one-off, and the weather returned to... guess what? Yep, another spell of northerlies. No wonder there are still white-winged gulls mooching around the fish factories. Yesterday against all the odds turned out summery though, so I finally got round to doing the breeding wader surveys I'd promised FWAG I'd do for them some weeks ago.
It's interesting stuff, the project behind these surveys. We all 'know' that keeping cows on the land is 'better' for biodiversity than stocking with sheep for example. But there's no work or body of evidence to actually prove this. The local branch of FWAG are running a project to encourage crofters to keep cows on their land, and over the next few years will be measuring any changes in the biodiversity of the participating land. It all starts this year, hence the wader surveys to establish a starting point.
A really mixed bag yesterday evening; some land absolutely heaving with breeding waders (Snipe, Oystercatcher, Curlew and Redshank); and other parks barren and void of any sign of waders, let alone territorial or feeding birds. To draw a simplistic (but stark) conclusion, it was the land which had had cows on it for some time which had the breeding birds; the clearly ex-sheep parks were the poor ones for waders. It'll be interesting to see in a few years time after they've been stocked with cows whether the waders start to adopt them for breeding purposes.
JL joined me while we tramped around looking for signs of breeding waders; it's always in the back of my mind when doing stuff like this that were there any justice in the world, this is the time you'll stumble across that mega bird, something like a Caspian Plover for example. Of course, it wasn't to be. Encouraging though were a couple of admittedly miniscule colonies of Arctic Terns, with birds bringing in fish; not, on closer inspection, sand-eels; instead small sillicks (coley?). I hope the terns can adapt to this new feeding regime and raise some young this year. We'll see.
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June 07, 2005
Summer time and the blogging is cheesey
Finally the northerlies have eased off again up here, and the sun is out and we're up to a balmy 12.5deg C. Which feels bloody hot here, believe me. Some signs of migration on Shetland as a whole, with a couple of good warblers (Subalpine and Sardinian), and a pair of Red-rumped Swallows, one on Fair Isle and one on our island. JL phoned me about it on Saturday evening, unfortunately just as we were leaving the house to catch the ferry to Mainland to go out for a meal with P's folks. B had found the bird, and by all accounts it was fairly confiding for a few hours that evening.
I didn't feel too chastened to miss it - after all, I've seen plenty overseas, a few in the UK, and even found my own at Porthgwarra whilst in Cornwall on my honeymoon in 2001. So not exactly deprived of them! But it would still have been a good bird to see had it stuck around (sadly, it didn't). Can't imagine how I'd be feeling had this been a Needletail!
Anyway, summer feels like it's here after a fashion, despite the fact there's still a lone Iceland Gull sweating it out here in town, sitting in a field at Gremista and wondering what the hell it's doing there. A few more records of Trumpeter Finch from northern Europe - they're now being seen in Scandinavia, so there's hope for us yet.
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June 01, 2005
Ratings junkie
Calling the Birdwatching namecheck Aurora Borealis's 15 minutes of fame was clearly over-egging the pudding; in the past 48 hours since the magazine hit the newstands, there have been approximately 120 hits on the blog... which is a bit grim, given the blog often averages more than that without any endorsement. Conclusions?
A mention in Birdwatching has an inverse effect on blog traffic, and in fact puts people off looking here? Surely not...
Nobody read the article? But it was interesting! C'mon people, armchair birding at its very best (particularly all the other glossy blogs Katie mentioned, the ones where the authors are on the other side of the world and regularly post photos of mouth-watering exotica...)
Nobody reads Birdwatching? Can't be the case.
Birdwatching readers don't own computers? Or are wary of leftfield birding blogs? Hey, I don't bite!
Maybe it'll all change this weekend when people have time to sit down and read the magazine, or come across it when they're out buying the Saturday papers. It's all a bit galling now I'm doing the whole Birding 500 website ranking thingy, which is in danger of becoming a compulsion. (Ha! Birders and obsessions... we'd know all about that.) I think my highest ranking last week was a brief stint at 5 or 6, so to find Aurora Borealis hovering in the 20-40 limbo is a bit disappointing.
Mind you, I know what'd cure this. A nice juicy rarity on the island. After all, you can only eulogise about drumming Snipe and starving Arctic Terns for so long before it becomes old hat. I need new copy to tempt people in... Preferably a rarity-finding story with some exclusive photos. The Brown Shrike and the Gyr Falcon both sent the blog-counter off the scale, so there's something in this theory.
So what news from here? It's 10.30pm, still daylight outside (mad), and I've just dug some more of my tattie patch. Have come inside for beer and sympathy. There's Arctic Terns trying to fish offshore, and some nice Snipe drumming overhead if anyone's interested?
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