Iceland gull back for it's fifth winter at Pennington Flash

I was very pleased to pick out an adult Iceland gull at the gull roost tonight. It's probably the returning bird back for it's 5th winter, first seen as a juvenile in 2017. This is the first time the bird has been seen this winter.

Iceland gull, Rockcliffe, Cumbria

Travelling back from working in Scotland today and in a desire to avoid service stations, I decided to have a quick pit stop at Rockcliffe in Cumbria. There's been a juvenile Iceland gull on the River Eden here for a week or so, and it was showing quite well today in the late afternoon, albeit against the harsh light of the setting winter sun. Perfect timing for my first Iceland gull of the year, it really was bitter today.

In October 1994 I also called in here with my Dad on our way to Caerlaverock to see what was my first greater yellowlegs.

Musselburgh

Over the past few years, Musselburgh just east of Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth has become one of my favourite birding places. The main reason for this is the sea ducks. For an inland west coast birder who has to make do with the occasional 1st winter long-tailed duck on the local lake or very distant scoter on the North Wales coast, it's a dream to see velvet scoter close enough to be able to identify them without waiting for them to fly or adult male and female long-tailed ducks in immaculate winter plumage.

A scan over the sea from the mouth of the River Esk will reveal at least 30 or 40 velvets at quite close range and occasionally a few might be really close, so that you can clearly see features which you can only imagine from the majority of North Wales lookouts, such as the white tick behind the eye and perhaps even the white eye ring. If you're really lucky they might be joined by an American white-winged scoter which is very similar to the velvets but with a different bill structure and colour, and an even larger white tick. No such luck today, apparently it's been hit and miss this winter, but I was compensated by another American bird, an adult drake surf scoter. This is a bird which I have seen many times from the North Wales coast, with sometimes up to five birds in amongst the thousands of common scoter which congregate off that coast, but they're always at best distant and I've never seen then as well as at Musselburgh. My first surf scoter was from Llanfairfechan in 1983 and I remember commenting at the time that it looked like a coot in amongst the scoter. It was basically just a black dot with a white forehead. At Musselburgh they are revealed as a strikingly impressive bird, the males with completely black plumage with an orange bill and big white patches on the eider shaped head. Speaking of eiders, several are present offshore.

Long-tailed duck are also present as are goldeneye, wigeon and a few Slavonian grebes. The adult male long-tailed ducks are like a different species to the smudgy and rather oiled looking young birds we sometimes see locally, with sharp black, white, grey and pink plumage and a black bill with a pink band, plus a long tail as well of course! In spring I often see them chasing each other around but not today. 

So far Musselburgh has been a place I've only visited on work trips to the area, which obviously doesn't give me a lot of time, I always seem to be in a rush. When things improve and we get back to normal, I'll have to make a point of staying in the area for a few days to really get to know the place.

Merry Christmas!

Here's an old favourite which I bring out every so often at this time of year, a robin which landed on my apple just as I was about to take a bite and even more remarkably stayed there while I got my camera out! Merry Christmas everybody, I hope you have a good one.

A bleak day on the south Cumbrian coast

Another day sitting and watching on the Cumbrian coast in blustery winds and heavy drizzly rain, it hardly seemed to get light today. It was still an enjoyable day though, eight hours under my fishermans brolly worried that at any minute a gust might rip it from it's pegs and send it tumbling into the sea leaving me exposed to the elements. As I write the mist and rain is so bad that I can barely see Walney Island little more than a kilometre distant. 

The birdings been good, the highlight was a great northern diver which I watched as it tried to swallow a large fish. Later I watched as it lowered it's head in an aggressive manner and swam towards a small flock of wigeon, before diving and then emerging right in the middle of the flock with its wings spread, flushing the wigeon in all directions. I've never seen that before. Other highlights included a grey seal, my first here, and a greenshank.

Hudsonian godwit, Eden estuary

It's been a poor year for birding, I've been very cautious about where I go and who I meet due to being in a vulnerable Covid-19 group and because of this I've been very restricted as to where I was prepared to go chasing birds. You only have to look back through the posts on this blog to see that despite all of the great birds available during the autumn, from Siberian thrush to yellow-bellied flycatcher to rufous-tailed scrub robin, the only really notable entry from me is brown shrike in Yorkshire. Everything else is pretty much local stuff, and not even much of that. However, my job does take me to many great places around the UK, so I've not been completely stuck at home and when I'm away I do get opportunities to get some decent wildlife experiences, e.g. bottle-nosed whales in the Clyde on my way home from Mull of Kintyre in September.

I saw my first Hudsonian godwit (and the first for the UK) in April 1983 at Blacktoft Sands RSPB and for the next 32 years it was one of the few blockers on my UK list until it finally fell in May 2015, a bird which I also saw. When a 1st winter was reported on the River Eden at Guardbridge, Fife in early November this year, it was a bird which piqued my interest partly because of my fond memories of the species but also because it was a plumage which I had not seen before. However due to Covid-19 I had no expectation of seeing the bird, yes I did have a job nearby in mid December, but surely it wouldn't stay that long? I was wrong.

I'd almost forgotten about it to be honest, it was only periodically being reported in the run up to my visit to Fife, but I made a few enquiries with locals and managed to get some further information regarding the bird and the best places to see it, depending on the tide. 

So today I called in at the Eden Centre at Guardbridge. The centre is currently closed due to Covid-19, but there are viewing screens (thankfully not hides) on either side of the building which are permanently open, and this is where I headed for today. It turned out to be a very nice lunch break stop, there were just three other birders present and all nicely spread out, and the bird was showing as soon as I arrived, on the far side of a channel about 75m away. Although it was a beautiful, bright sunny day, the harsh winter sun to our right rather than directly behind us meant that the light was not as good as it might have been, but I can't complain, it wasn't raining or blowing a gale and I'm told that only in the past few days has the bird started coming this close, having spent much of its stay quite a bit more distant.

The bird was associating with about 30 black-tailed godwits which were also joined by a few knot, dunlin and redshanks. While I was watching the air was full of the calls of waders and ducks, which also included curlew and greenshank, and a couple of times a kingfisher flew past unseen but clearly heard.

Superficially similar to the black-tailed godwits, once you got your eye-in for the bird it was quite easy to pick out even when it had it's head tucked in asleep. The pale supercillium in front of the eye really stands out and is a really good feature for picking it out. It's also smaller than it's cousins and this individual is well marked on it's scapulars, much more so than the accompanying black-tailed godwits, though I'm not sure if this latter feature is true of all 1st winter Hudsonian godwits.

Ring-necked duck, Kilmardinny Loch, Clyde

Ring-necked duck, the duck with rings everywhere apart from on it's neck, is a really smart species. In my opinion it sits proudly in a small, elite group of scarce yet very exciting North American vagrants which also includes the likes of buff-breasted sandpiper, pectoral sandpiper, wilson's phalarope, black brant, green-winged teal and cackling canada goose, not very rare yet very evocative species. 

I didn't have a lot of time today, I just stopped off in my lunch break for a quick look without too many expectations, because there's always the risk with these aythya diving ducks that by midday they'll all have their heads tucked in and be fast asleep. Not today though, all of the diving ducks were awake and chasing each other around and feeding and in amongst them was the ring-necked duck. 

Kilmardinny Loch at Bearsden is only a small loch, and so long as the birds are not asleep, decent views are pretty much guaranteed. Still, they were doing an awful lot of diving and at first decent photos were a challenge, but they were obviously doing a lap of the loch so I just waited 10 minutes and they came right past me. The close up photos are all phone scoped at close range during a period of relative inactivity.

Pink footed geese, Holcroft Moss

The pink-footed goose flock which is spending time feeding just south of Culcheth, viewable from Holcroft Lane, has increased in number this week to around 800-1000 birds. I've spent quite a bit of time looking through them over the past few days but haven't been able to pick out anything unusual since the Greenland whitefront last week, but it's just nice to have the opportunity to watch geese so close to home. They get disturbed quite a lot and move between several fields during the day, often landing out of view, so they can be quite difficult.

Greenland white-fronted goose, Holcroft Moss

Greenland white-front with pink-footed geese 
Photo © John Tymon.

Yesterday John Tymon found a magnificent Greenland white-fronted goose just south of Culcheth on Holcroft Moss. Unlike the first COVID lockdown when I was out every day and the weather was great, this time around I've found it very difficult to motivate myself, what with the bad weather and short days and I've managed to resist a whole host of rarities from Siberian thrush to rufous scrub-robin. However nothing gets the Davies pulse racing like a goose just before Christmas and sure enough I was out today looking for this bird. Armed with information from John I headed for Holcroft Lane and found a flock of about 450 pink-footed geese near Frank's farm. Unfortunately though, most of the flock was in a dip in the field and invisible to me. After about half an hour though I managed to pick out the white-front but almost immediately a farm vehicle drove down a track and flushed the lot!

Actually it wasn't too bad, they flew off east, way over towards Little Woolden Moss before returning to land in roughly the same area, but not before flying through Greater Manchester airspace and becoming a new addition to my GM list (if I kept one!). While they were flying, a female pintail flew up and briefly joined them before dropping down again.

My database tells me that I saw 10 Russian white-fronted geese at Pennington Flash on 27th November 1993, however I have absolutely no recollection of them. The county report for 1993 says they roosted from 21st November to 1st December, with one Pink-Footed Goose and fed somewhere nearby.

     

South Cumbria dawn til dusk

Photo: Great northern diver, dawn, Urswick Tarn.

Photo: Sunrise at the river Leven.

I spent the day in south Cumbria today, surveying estuary birds. It can be a long day, especially if the weather is bad, but sitting in one spot from dawn until dusk watching and monitoring the movements of estuary birds as the tides advance and recede can also be a very rewarding and relaxing experience. Nothing unusual to note today, 55 curlew, 150 dunlin, 70 knot, 150 redshank, 800 oystercatchers, 80 eider, three red-breasted mergansers, eight goldeneye and a single greenshank, all pretty much standard fare, but exactly what I want to see when I'm here.