Starting Over in September: Bird Report for 14/09/20 - 20/09/20

My first official post for this blog and I'm fortunate enough for it to be during one of the most exciting times for bird migration. While the main author may have changed, fear not, the stars of the show (or blog, as the case may be) - the birds! - are still performing. For many of us, September may be synonymous with bird migration and this week has lived up to expectations. Our regular migrant species were still passing through but there has also been a turnover of species – with four new species for this blog being recorded.

A handsome skylark

Diving right in to our new species, first up is perhaps not what we tend to consider a migrant species: kingfisher. These stunning blue birds will disperse over smaller distances in search of food (especially when coming up to winter) and it was a pleasant surprise to find one fishing at the Fisher’s Lane outlet three days in a row this week. Kingfishers are sometimes seen over at Soleburn but it was nice to see one closer to home. Unfortunately, they tend not to stick around because there isn’t enough food for them here.

Another group of birds that people tend not to consider migrants are the gulls. Many people are surprised to earn that lesser black-backed gulls spend their winters in Portugal and this week we’ve seen 32 individuals flying south heading for warmer pastures. While some species are less often seen on passage, we’ve certainly seen the tell-tale increases in their numbers. Common scoters were up to 88 this week, alongside 73 mute swans scattered around the loch and 90 shags all seated on the pier. Our pale-bellied brent geese have started returning (up to 38 so far), bringing with them a couple of dark-bellies. A lonesome teal at the scar was an unusual sight, we would more expect to see it alongside the 158 others that were at Loch Connell this week. Loch Connell was really showing it’s stuff this week, being the site of two new species for the blog, the first of which was a couple of shoveler.

Our smaller migrant species have been seen in good counts this week, with our third new species amongst them. 92 swallows and 38 skylarks were the highest day-counts for these species and 25 meadow pipits being present at Loch Connell alone. Perched in a tree over-looking this flock was our unexpected new species: a Lapland bunting. Records of these have been more plentiful than usual along the west coast this autumn and I’m glad that we got to share in this influx. We have also seen willow warblers in our garden across the week, with goldcrests, chiffchaffs (some of these singing!), a sedge warbler and a couple of treecreepers also making an appearance.

Field sketch of the Lapland Bunting seen at Loch Connell

Back at the wig, three Greenland wheatears were seen over the week – these are a slightly larger subspecies of wheatear that breed in… you guessed it, Greenland! Waders have also been putting on a good show with a bar-tailed godwit, 145 golden plovers and 3 whimbrel (a slightly unusual record in autumn for us). We also saw an adult male ruff, still moulting out of its breeding plumage. This was quite exciting to see (if a little perplexing to identify at first!) because we generally don’t see moulting adult birds (we see juvenile birds in the main). Not to be outdone, in amongst the small numbers of ringed plovers and dunlin was our fourth and final (for this week anyway) new species: curlew sandpiper. These white-rumped waders are similar in appearance to dunlin and we see them in small numbers nearly every year.

We are not the only ones marvelling at the number of birds about: regular contributor Gill Deacon has seen scaup, wigeon and lots of razorbills (our own highest count this week was 95 birds around the loch) at Innermesson this week. Amongst these, Gill was fortunate enough to see two red-throated divers still in breeding plumage and a red-necked grebe. We haven’t recorded red-necked grebe for the past three weeks but it must have told its friends about us because by the end of the week there were four present!

In addition to this, we have some more records from further afield this week. At the weekend we headed out to do the monthly WeBS (Wetland Bird Survey) count at Piltanton. Waders were definitely the stars of the show, with 172 curlew, 110 lapwings (I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen so many in a single flock!), 32 redshank and 10 greenshank. The greenshank were especially nice to see because we only occasionally see them around the wig and ten is quite a good count for us at Piltanton.

This just goes to show that, wherever you are, now is the time to be out birding! On that note, I’ll sign off for this week… time to go grab my bins!

[All photographs and pictures are taken by and belong to Stephen Grover, please ask if you wish to use them.]