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Birds fae Torry (1 Viewer)

Well I seem to have found myself a few hundred miles to the north of Torry this weekend, so don't have anything to report (at least from Torry, although I could tell you a thing or two about what I have been seeing). I noticed there was a report of a Slavonian Grebe on the harbour on Friday - will have a good look for that when I return on Monday.
 
Well I seem to have found myself a few hundred miles to the north of Torry this weekend, so don't have anything to report (at least from Torry, although I could tell you a thing or two about what I have been seeing). I noticed there was a report of a Slavonian Grebe on the harbour on Friday - will have a good look for that when I return on Monday.

I often fancy a trip to Shetland on the ferry, but since I don't drive there would be certain difficulties getting about. Two weeks in the Sumburgh Hotel would be a nice relaxing jaunt though. So now I have to decide for next year: two weeks seawatching at the Butt of Lewis, two at Sumburgh or two at Istanbul watching raptors. Hmmm, life is hard

On the principle that no two days are the same, stuff should be pouring in here overnight. Roll on Eastern Crowned Warbler - a cert for the Ness I'd say.
Hope you're not still up there when it arrives!

Cheers,
 
Back on the beat

Well, no Eastern Crowned Warbler today, but I was firmly back on patch. There was the keenest of northwesterly winds with a few showers and lots of rainbows (see below). Mid-afternoon a few skeins of Pink-footed Geese blew across town. Later I had a walk to the Ness whilst, I'm afraid to say, listening to the football. Remember that your ears are just as important as your eyes when birding. Err, anyway, I did see a few birds even if I didn't hear much. And we can also get a couple of regular winter topics on the go.

The Eider subspecific challenge
I love nothing more than grappling with variations in drake Common Eiders. Well maybe I love Lagavulin and cookie dough ice cream better, but it's a surprisingly close thing. This winter's first contender (and we're definitely talking winter now) was seen on one of the south piers this afternoon and then later on the river. It had really rather prominent sails, which it was enthusiastically 'erecting' no doubt to impress the nearby females. Maybe it impresses the drakes too, I don't know. Most Eiders with sails that I've seen tend to show an orangey tone to the bill with rather rounded frontal lobes. This bird had a grey-green tone to the bill, with quite pointed frontal lobes. The legs were also rather dark and grey looking. If we go along with Eider guru Martin Garner...
http://www.birdsireland.com/pages/site_pages/features/eider/eider.html
... we could speculate that this is a borealis type from the eastern part of its range e.g. Svalbard. Indeed it looked a bit like the picture of a Svalbard bird shown on the page above, as can be seen from the excellent picture I took (see below). Okay, maybe it's not all that clear. But it was getting a bit gloomy. Or maybe it's just a local bird and maybe some of them have sails and it's nothing to get too excited about. But hey I might have a long winter's birding ahead of me, so let's keep things interesting shall we.

The Purple Sandpiper totaliser
Some regular readers of this thread have expressed an interest in seeing Purple Sandpipers at Girdle Ness, possibly in the fairly near future. So, I thought I'd start a series of regular counts of these rather fetching calidrids. It wasn't a particularly high tide today so there was plenty of room still on the rocks at Greyhope Bay, which is where they all were. And the totaliser says:

9

Let's hope that, if we all work together, that number can shoot up during the course of the winter. There were also 40 Turnstones, 2 Dunlin and a Golden Plover having an identity crisis with the Oystercatchers.

I had a quick go at seawatching from the Coo, but, as seems to be the order of things these days, very little was moving aside from some distant auks and Gannets.
 

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The Eider subspecific challenge
I love nothing more than grappling with variations in drake Common Eiders. Well maybe I love Lagavulin and cookie dough ice cream better, but it's a surprisingly close thing. This winter's first contender (and we're definitely talking winter now) was seen on one of the south piers this afternoon and then later on the river. It had really rather prominent sails, which it was enthusiastically 'erecting' no doubt to impress the nearby females. Maybe it impresses the drakes too, I don't know. Most Eiders with sails that I've seen tend to show an orangey tone to the bill with rather rounded frontal lobes. This bird had a grey-green tone to the bill, with quite pointed frontal lobes. The legs were also rather dark and grey looking. If we go along with Eider guru Martin Garner...
http://www.birdsireland.com/pages/site_pages/features/eider/eider.html
... we could speculate that this is a borealis type from the eastern part of its range e.g. Svalbard. Indeed it looked a bit like the picture of a Svalbard bird shown on the page above, as can be seen from the excellent picture I took (see below). Okay, maybe it's not all that clear. But it was getting a bit gloomy. Or maybe it's just a local bird and maybe some of them have sails and it's nothing to get too excited about. But hey I might have a long winter's birding ahead of me, so let's keep things interesting shall we.

I know you just make this stuff up. I'm not fooled, you know. Designing whole web pages just to support this nonsense is getting a little obsessive though, don't you think?

(Just hold on to those Sandpipers)
 
A rather lovely day here in Aberdeen - what the weather forecasters call 'autumnal sunshine'. It's a while since progress was made on the house list but 2 Long-tailed Ducks flew north this morning, juddering us up another notch. Also 2 Red-throated Divers and a Grey Wagtail from the flat. There seemed to be more Blackbirds than normal in the gardens and a few distant thrushes were passing over the town. The first Bottle-nosed Dolphins for a little while were around the river mouth - probably just a couple. Out to sea there was a large feeding flock of Gannets mid-morning.

Late in the afternoon I took a stroll around the Ness, more in hope than expectation. It actually turned out to be relatively productive. Along the north shore, a female Black Redstart was flycatching along the top of the beach, just between the two inner breakwaters. Only my third Scottish Black Redstart and the first I've seen in autumn. This bird was lovingly captured in the next installment of our long-running series 'Birds slightly out of focus and a bit too dark'. That should be one of the BF monthly photo competition themes. I'd win. A rather neat looking juvenile Red-throated Diver was just offshore and I also saw the 'borealis type' Eider again, around the middle breakwater. I think today's picture is actually a little less gloomy than the ones from the other day. Can't see any badgers in it either. I had another bash at counting waders on Greyhope Bay. Eventually I got up to 14 Ringed Plovers but could only see 7 Purple Sandpipers. Then they all got spooked and flew towards the harbour, which meant that the Purple Sandpiper totalised lurched up to:

34

They're really very good at hiding. I think we'll need a good high tide to get a proper count. A male Stonechat was nearby and a female and a Song Thrush were around the Battery. Nothing in the Lighthouse Field bird wise but it's the time of year when one might chance upon the tantalising remains of fireworks, no doubt set off the previous night by local ne'er-do-wells (see picture four). A heart warming tradition that lives on here in Torry.

There was some quality dolphin goings on with a couple milling around the harbour mouth and then a baby going right up into the harbour and out again. There also seems to have been a big influx of gulls, and lots were roosting on the sea, as they often do on calm nights. Finally, as I was walking up past the Battery a Short-eared Owl flew up and across the golf course. It's actually the bird in picture five (yes it is!). Kind of an evocative picture, even though you can't actually tell what it is.
 

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More lovely stuff again this morning - autumn is the new summer. There seemed to be quite a few Blackbirds strutting about the gardens, offering some hope of a bit of an influx of migrants despite the benign weather. Two Red-throated Divers were in the harbour and a drake Long-tailed Duck flew north.

Off round Girdle Ness, which is quite near Torry (just to remind people in preparation for the bash in two weeks time ;)). A pair of Stonechats were chacking away in 'The Tree'. A word of advice for any Stonechats reading this. You can chack away all you want on top of gorse bushes and thistles, but don't go sitting about in trees doing it. Don't you know that all rare warblers chack? Nearly gave me heart failure. Migrants weren't really happening though - just a Redwing around the Battery and that was it.

On the harbour, two very obliging immature Long-tailed Ducks were close inshore (see half-decent pictures below). Long-tailed Ducks are 'about' all of a sudden, which is always rather uplifting. 7 Barnacle Geese flew around the harbour mouth, which was good but slightly annoying because I could have got them on the house list if I'd actually been in the house. Darn. On Greyhope Bay there were 12 Ringed Plovers but just one Purple Sandpiper. Will there be any in two weeks? *raises tension* As it happened, there were another 8 around at the Ness. All the waders there were spooked but at first there was no sign of anything to do the spooking. Then a Merlin shot along the top of the bank and almost flew into me. Offshore were 3 more Red-throated Divers and, fairly impressively, an immature Black Guillemot (see quite bad picture below) - the first I've seen at Girdle Ness. A small flock of thrushes came in off the sea. From what I could see and hear they were Song Thrushes *looks mildly surprised*

There was also a stupid amount of Borealis type Eider action, which is detailed below, for anyone interested. Not many of you I expect.
 

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Ooh, I need Black Guillemot for my life list.

Where did you say Girdle Ness was again? ;)

I think it's probably okay for you to see Black Guillemot, and may indeed be necessary if there are any Little Auks about. Girdle Ness isn't that good for them though. And in any case, I've now forgotten where it is myself. Peterhead is probably a better bet, so maybe we'll have a look there. If you're good ;).
 
Borealis Bonanza

I've been looking out for 'Eiders showing scapular sails' for a couple of years now. They crop up quite regularly once you start looking but usually just one or two amongst the very large numbers that can be found year-round here in Northeast Scotland. Today I had a fairly good look through the hundred or so Eiders around the harbour mouth and Girdle Ness and saw possibly as many as seven including 2 females. Kerr-razy. All of the drakes looked rather similar with quite grey-green coloured bills, although one had only rather small sails, not much more than the regular 'bump' that a lot of drake Eiders show on the scapulars. Most borealis types I've seen before show a noticeable orangey tint to the bill, but not these. The females only showed small sails but on one bird they were pretty obvious triangular peaks.

It's kind of surprising that these birds are so frequent. Although sails are supposed to be a sign of 'northern origins', and it certainly seems that sails are the norm within the range of borealis, I find myself wondering if it's a feature rather like the white spectacle on 'bridled' Guillemots i.e. something that can appear in various parts of Eider's range but is more frequent further north. I dunno. I'll keep checking them out though.

Just for the record, Eiders with sails were seen as follows:

1. Male, inner harbour
2. Male (still showing some eclipse plumage) middle breakwater (picture one)
3. 2 Males, 2 Females, Greyhope Bay (pictures two and three)
4. Male, off the Ness
 

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Took the house list up to a heady 65 this morning with a Coal Tit perched, rather incongruously, on a TV aerial. Training my scope on my neighbours is starting to pay dividends.

Otherwise it was a bit of an away day, on which I saw a very charming juvenile White-winged Black Tern at Loch of Skene. Ahhhh......
 
"Training my scope on my neighbours is starting to pay dividends"-well I hope it's not on Aggie or we may not have a BF bash leader in two weeks.

And for goodness sake we're not going twitching birds like Purple Sands and Black Guillemots in 2 weeks are we. Who on earth would want to see them-let's stick to a masterclass in Eiders with sails and hardcore local patching
 

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