Being more than a little keen to avoid catching the dreaded Coronavirus, and/or infecting others unknowingly, I have only been 'proper' birding three times since lockdown began (other than on my walk to/from work) and all 3 times were within Dundee and on foot. However, not everyone took lockdown as seriously including quite a few birders - most noticeably those who flagrantly broke the rules to twitch a Desert Warbler in Northumberland from their homes in Scotland, around the time that others from England crossed the Irish Sea to try and see a Cayenne Tern. In both cases at least some of them bragged about having done so on social media. Thankfully most of my birding friends are far more sensible, rather than selfish and reckless, and stuck to the rules put in place to try to control the spread of the virus and thus reduce the amount of likely fatalities and pressure on the NHS etc.
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| Wheatear |
Ian got in touch late last week to see if I fancied a birding trip out somewhere on Saturday. Having so far missed out on a lot of species I would normally have seen by now by abiding to the rules put in place by the Scottish Government, it was an easy decision to make. We decided on an 0800 pick-up and a trip along the Angus coast. Targets for me included Little Gull, Sand Martin, Puffin and Wheatear. Our first stop at Balmossie gave us some decent birds with a family of Grey Wagtails flying around and reasonable numbers of Bar Tailed Godwits among the better species. Next we headed along to the football pitches at Monifieth to scan eastwards along the beach. The red flags were flying at Barry Buddon so we would have to make do with scoping any distant birds by the burn.
This proved to be a productive stop with around 5
Little Gulls and a pair of
Common Terns at the burn and a few
Sand Martins passing westwards. All were new for the year. In addition we picked up a small flock of 4 Crossbills which stopped briefly in the trees on the camp before continuing west. There were a few Teal down on the shore and a small flock of Linnets and Greenfinches flying around. Our next stop was at Westhaven where an adult Little Gull was the first bird I spotted when I set up my scope - it being central in my field of view when I leant forward to look. There was also a single
Arctic Tern, another new bird for the year, perched out on the rocks with Sandwich and Common Terns.
We had a wander along to Craigmill Burn which added
Wheatear to my year-list with a number of still quite fluffy looking youngsters on the beach. A Common Sandpiper flew up the burn when it spotted us. Things were otherwise relatively quiet though there seemed to be plenty of Pied Wagtails around as well as a fairly constant stream of small numbers of Swallows, House and Sand Martins plus Swifts heading west. We headed next to Easthaven to walk along the coastal path towards Hatton to try for Yellow Wagtail. Unfortunately there was no sign of any, though there were plenty of Pied Wagtails in the area. A small family group(?) of Lapwings overflew, and a few Skylarks and Stonechats were seen where we hoped to find Yellow Wagtails.
A Whitethroat was noted from the car as we turned onto the dual carriageway towards Arbroath with Auchmithie our next stop. Unsurprisingly it didn't take too much effort there to add
Puffin as we scanned from the north end of the village with around 12-15 birds seen down on the water in small, scattered groups. Guillemots, Razorbills, Kittiwakes and eventually a Fulmar were added to our list for the day. By now we had about an hour or so of useable time available so we headed back to a very busy Arbroath cliffs area. We found a parking space some distance away from the cliffs and scanned from beside the car. Despite our efforts the best we managed were a flock of 15-20 Common Scoters, a possible Mediterranean Gull and 2 Harbour Porpoises.
We called it a day at around 1515 and headed back to Dundee after a successful outing having only dipped on Yellow Wagtail among the hoped for target species. I had managed to add 6 year-ticks (in bold) among the 64 species we managed to see. Ian was trying out my now fixed Leica scope and I was using my relatively new Swarovski scope so I had traveled light on the camera front with only a fairly poorly performing 70-300 lens for record shots and the results here speak for themselves. All in all though it was good to be back out birding and to catch up with Ian too.
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| Common Crossbill |
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| Common Crossbill |
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| Greenfinch |
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| Wheatear |
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| Wheatear |
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| Wheatear |
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| Wheatear |
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| Wheatear |
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| Common Tern & Sandwich Tern |
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| Dunlin |
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| Jackdaw & Rook |
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| Jackdaw & Rook |
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| Eider |
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| Common Sandpiper |
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| Stonechat |
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| Lapwing |
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| Yellowhammer |
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| Grey Heron & Rook |
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| Eider |
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| Starling |
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| Puffin |
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| Herring Gull, Oystercatcher & Kittiwake |
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| Kittiwake |
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| Swift |
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| Sandwich Tern & Black Headed Gull |
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| (Possible) Mediterranean Gull |
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| Common Scoter & Gannet |
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| Common Scoter & Gannet |
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| Black Headed Gull |
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| Gannet |
Species seen -
Arctic Tern, Bar Tailed Godwit, Blackbird, Black Headed Gull, Buzzard, Carrion Crow, Collared Dove, Common Crossbill, Common Gull, Common Sandpiper, Common Scoter,
Common Tern, Cormorant, Curlew, Dunlin, Dunnock, Eider, Fulmar, Gannet, Goldfinch, Goosander, Great Black Backed Gull, Greenfinch, Grey Heron, Grey Wagtail, Guillemot, Herring Gull, House Martin, House Sparrow, Jackdaw, Kittiwake, Lapwing, Lesser Black Backed Gull, Linnet,
Little Gull, Magpie, Mallard, Meadow Pipit, Mediterranean Gull, Mute Swan, Oystercatcher, Pied Wagtail,
Puffin, Razorbill, Redshank, Reed Bunting, Feral Pigeon, Rock Pipit, Rook,
Sand Martin, Sandwich Tern, Shag, Shelduck, Siskin, Skylark, Starling, Stonechat, Swallow, Swift, Teal,
Wheatear, Whitethroat, Woodpigeon, Yellowhammer.
Butterflies seen - Meadow Brown, Ringlet, Small Tortoiseshell, Small White.
Mammals seen - Harbour Porpoise.
