warming up

Not literally - it's been freezing - but certainly spring seems to have sprung as far as the birds are concerned.

The pomarine skua continues to linger offshore, but on the 7th it was upstaged by a chiffchaff (not often I'll say that...) at the sewage works. I'm pretty certain that the bird was new in to the sewage works, having specifically looked for overwintering chiffs in the new year and not seeing any. However, it's more difficult to say whether the bird was a genuine migrant or not - it could well have been flitting undetected on Tullos hill for the winter, and March 7th is a very early date for a 'new in' chiffer up here.

The 8th was also productive with plenty of pinkfeet on the move, 4 whooper swans, and perhaps best of all from a patch point of view, a northbound shelduck. Having noted that whoopers were being noted moving north over the previous few days I'd gone out specifically with this species in mind. It's good when a plan comes together. Which doesn't happen often...

The decent run continued on to the 9th, when 2 stock doves were noted flying north past the battery - still a really good bird patch wise, with possibly only 5 or 6 previous records and the vast majority of them coming from Nigg bay.

As the weather deteriorated through the week, so did the quality of the birding - early morning seawatches have failed to deliver, and a lunchtime seawatch on the 11th was only notable due to the close up views of a couple of rain covered ringed plover taking shelter behind a rock. You can see the rain on the birds feathers on the second photo.

Roll on the proper migrants...

the lull...

It's been a long period without any real 'movement through the crease'. For the remainder of February there seemed to be very little change at girdle ness, although the wheezing of greenfinches and the tinkling of linnets was an expected, but nonetheless welcome addition. As for the rest of the month, the highlight continued to be the otter, which showed from the office window with relative frequncy, and once in it's favoured area when I happened to be outside - so I finally got the opportunity to get some shots of it without having a murky window in the way.

As soon as February was out, the birds started picking up. Nothing remarkable but both greylag goose and pomarine skua have the potential to be tricky. A dunlin also put in an appearance, making it three additions to the patch yearlist in three days.

The first of the wildflowers are on show as well, as of the last week or so, with coltsfoot and lesser celandine both brightening the place up.

Comedown

The return to the patch has been, well, slightly less dramatic than the gull and boreal(ish) passerine fest of my trip to Norway! And I say this having had another look at the harbour otter on my first day back in the office.

As always with mid February, the first few signs of spring are appearing - most noticeably the presence, and singing of skylarks all over Girdle Ness. I have added a few species to the patch year list, such as siskin, mute swan and kittiwake (at last!), and the lunchtime high tides have returned a few good wader counts - 98 redshank being particularly notable. In spite of that though it's been desperately quiet...

Some stuff from Bergen

One of the best reasons to go on the G.O Sars IBTS cruise is that invariably you get a wee bit of time to spend in Bergen. Bergen is beautiful, and very cool, and as it's only once a year this is just about enough to take the edge off the price of the beer. It's also got a few decent birds. There is not much going on in the city centre, but there seems to be a peregrine in residence (or at least there was while I was there) and the pond in the city centre has attracted interesting gulls. The only gull of any interest while I was there was this common gull with some retained juvenile scapulars - so presumably a far northern, or possibly heinei - not that I noted any other features that point towards that subspecies on this bird. It's worth noting that these 'late developers' have been observed well in western Norway before - e.g. see here

Much more fun, and offering a very rapid contrast of city centre to the wilds, are the woods at the top of the funicular railway. Just beyond the inevitable gift shop, there are a few feeders that attract, among things, mega looking europaea nuthatches, borealis type willow tits,  and very northern looking treecreepers. Unfortunately, being in a forest, in Norway, in winter, in the rain, the light conditions were awful, which had the same knock on effects on my pictures. Still, that won't stop me posting them...

The willow tits were elusive, and very quick (i.e. too quick for me) at the feeders. Look how cold and grey this bird looks compared to British ones.

The male europaea nuthatches look utterly mega - those crisp white underparts contrasting with the rich, almost brick red rear flanks and UTCs. Females are a bit less striking - not sure I'd pick that as being any different if I saw it in Britain - although the breast does have a certain whiteness to it.

An awful shot but check out the frosty appearance, almost pure white underparts and bright white super that flares behind the eye and bleeds onto the hindneck and mantle.

The squirrels were quite confiding too...!

Caspian gull - G.O Sars, Feb 6th

What a massive surprise this bird was! It first appeared circling round the boat when we were mid survey - and appeared three times before disappearing (presumably into the melee behind the boat) for a few hours. It was incredibly striking in flight, but I wasn't convinced I had enough to nail an ID of such an off the radar spp. That set up a pretty tense few hours where we continued to survey but in reality all I wanted to do was look off the back of the boat! Fortunately it was still present when we stopped to trawl, and eventually it did the very decent thing and landed on the vessel.

It's been claimed as a first for Shetland - which is a little strange as it was at least 100 miles off Shetland (I think - must check though). It was definitely in Scottish waters though, which means it's a bit of a mega.

Doing a little digging, there are 4 records accepted between 2006 and 2009 (see here) and a further 3 reported to Birdguides after that - although 1 of those was only reported as a probable. That means that my bird is likely to be at the very most the 7th record for Scotland. I'll have that! Obviously it an SBRC rare, so here are the annotated pics that were submitted with the description.

White wingers on the Sars

One of the pleasures of doing winter IBTS surveys is that white winged gulls are occasionally attracted to the vessel, along with the many other large gulls, fulmars and gannets. Usually the Scotia does a lot better for white wingers (as indeed it did this time!) but with 7 different glaucs and 2 different icers were a pretty good haul. Funnily enough most of these were in the far north and not too far from Shetland.

Some shots from the G.O Sars cruise

Well it's fair to say that it's been an eventful couple of weeks on board the Sars - birdwise at least. And there are still a couple of days to go, so who knows what else might happen! Here are a few shots of the regular ship associates...