Verdin on a windy day

It was a very windy day in Edinburgh today - glad I wasn't out birding to be honest. But I did think back to the unseasonally strong winds that hampered my birding during our stay in Joshua Tree National Park, California, in April. This Verdin, a desert-adapted penduline tit, was sheltering in typical thorny bush habitat in the lee of a vast oil drum. In a bizarre quirk of fate, it turns out that this species is one that has had its physiological response to wind speed closely monitored in metabolic chamber wind tunnel tests! The results when extrapolated to birds in their natural environment indicate that moderate increases in wind speed are predicted to increase metabolic demands by 20-30% above normal requirements. Given the wind speed, I think that the figure might have been even higher on the day I took this photo.

Red-breasted Merganser

The weather was poor in Edinburgh this afternoon and at one point I saw a sawbill duck cutting through the rainy squalls. Just a brief view through the window, no optics to hand and visibility poor but at first I felt that it was most likely a female Goosander. Then I remembered that one year and one day ago, this adult female Red-breasted Merganser was on St Margaret's Loch in Holyrood Park (adult assumed based on bright bare parts?). So, I suppose there is a chance that today's Mergus sp. could be the latter species. Maybe it will fly past tomorrow...

Last year's bird gave unbeatable views as it cruised around with the other waterfowl looking for handouts. You know it is a good view of a sawbill when the serrated bill is visible with the naked eye...

Northern Fulmar plumage variation

For fear of getting doused in foul-smelling vomit, I didn't fancy getting too close to this young Northern Fulmar on North Ronaldsay, Orkney, in August 2009. As is often the case with the less-appealing types of baby birds, they do tend to mature into beautiful adult birds.

Here are a series of adults photographed from Burness on Sanday a few days before. These birds are all of the typical double-light plumage morph, but I have organised them from darkest to palest. From these pictures it looks as though feather wear may be responsible for at least part of this variation.

Last September I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to snatch some photographs of a 'blue' morph Northern Fulmar while on a pelagic trip off Newcastle (this bird is probably best considered a light morph or intermediate morph; the terminology is confusing in a UK context because blue fulmars are darker than our normal double-light birds but are still considered light in comparison with darker northern birds). This is the best shot, and as you can see it is not the clearest. I really wish that I had asked for the boat to turn to get a second look at this bird, but at the time thought that no-one else was likely to be that interested. Also, I was slightly skeptical that it was a 'real one', but have since found out that there appear to be a small number of resident birds in the North East of this plumage morph. Oh well, I'll get better shots, and, more importantly a better look, next time.

Nice bird? Well, it looked pretty neat in real life, and had quite a grey-blue hue to its head, neck and flanks, and in flight it looked really good, but it is not as dark as more northerly blue fulmars (dark and double-dark morph birds). Note the much heavier marking across the bill, which is typical in the blue fulmar. I managed to pick up another blue fulmar (light/intermediate morph) while seawatching off Buness, Fair Isle, in October and am now quite a fan of them. I must remember to have a look out for one off Lothian over the next few weeks.

On the same pelagic trip there was significant variation in the appearance of the regular morph birds. In the next shot, the rear bird has heavily abraded or moulting coverts (maybe a sign of a failed breeder moulting early) and a yellowish tone to the white head and body feathers, which is quite common.

The bird in the foreground seemed substantially paler in the field and I think the whiteness of its head, body and tail is quite striking. This bird may be similar to the palest bird in the flight shots above. I wonder how different these birds would be to the triple-light morph, which may or may not exist. On the other hand, I think it is possible that they have abraded tail feathers that appear whiter than normal. Anyone know?

Finally, here is another bird with quite serious primary moult. According to BWP, primary moult occurs in rapid succession but growth of outer primaries is slow. That, I think, hits the nail on the head - only a couple more primaries to lose on that left wing, but the new ones have got some catching up to do...

Royal icing

I could not resist another lunchtime trip to the royal park of Holyrood. Once again the Iceland Gull was up at Dunsapie and performing well. It was struggling against the competitors but at one point I see that it managed a small morsel of bread.

Interestingly it started calling at one point - like a typical Herring Gull begging call but higher pitched and thinner, certainly lacking in the harsh elements of typical large gull calls. Then I realised that the bird did appear to be begging - it had adopted a low hunched posture with upturned bill and was steadily pursuing a Herring Gull. 

While this hunched posture is used by young gulls as a submissive appeasement behaviour, it is also part of the food begging repertoire of most species - it certainly looked like begging. A good idea perhaps, but it didn't do the trick - the sub-adult Herring Gull (maybe confused by the appearance of an instant offspring) vacated the area.

What a great bird - here are a few more shots...

Icing on the cake: January's Lothian highlight

The first month of the year is coming to its end already, and I see on Bubo listing that I am well off the Lothian list pace. My running total of 88 species reflects a January with limited time for birding beyond my local patch. As a combined force, Lothian listers have logged 130 species in the county this year already and Tony O'Connor leads the current table up at 112. Of course, it is not a competition, I keep telling myself - just some fun. Nevertheless, quite a few of these should be easy targets for me in the next few weeks - I am yet to see Goosander, Whooper Swan or even Pochard. I also note that there are three species that feature on several lists that I have not yet seen in the county - Taiga Bean Goose, Green-winged Teal and Smew - maybe I should put some effort into seeing these in early February...

I did add a couple of new species today thanks to a deviation on the school run and a lunch hour in Holyrood Park, Edinburgh.

On both visits the Iceland Gull was showing well, on St Margaret's Loch in the morning and on Dunsapie Loch at lunch time. It could be enticed into flight with some carefully thrown bread crusts, though it seemed unable to compete with the screaming Black-headed Gulls for the scraps.

This bird is in first winter plumage, though this term is sometimes avoided for gulls like this one that have no post-juvenile moult (all the feathers here are un-moulted first generation juvenile feathers). The lack of moult may be related to the short nature of the Arctic summer. So what term would be better than first winter? Second calendar year (2CY) is maybe no better, given how different this bird will look in ten months' time, so possibly 'first generation' is best of all. Whatever we call it, it is certainly a strikingly beautiful young gull.

I had travelled to Galway in December in the vain hope of getting good views of this white-winged cracker. Little did I know that a month later there would be such an accommodating individual within a couple of miles of home!

The subtlety of the bird's markings could be best appreciated on the tail. The white primary feathers and long wings make this bird unmissable in flight.

The Iceland Gull could be tempted by bread, but it always seemed that little bit slower off the mark than the Black-headed Gulls and Common Gulls.

On the water, the long white primaries made the bird equally distinctive, and in good light, the bird's iris could be seen to be chestnut brown rather than black. This colour will lighten over the coming months to the very pale eye typical of adult Iceland Gull. The 2CY bill pattern already seems well developed.

Too slow to get to the bread, the bird started foraging, though it did not seem to be successful.

 

A great bird and one that I hope hangs around for the next few months...

Another bonus while feeding the gulls this morning was this Common Treecreeper in the trees around St Margaret's Loch. Another Lothian year tick for me.
















A Common Raven  over Arthur's Seat at lunchtime was a good bird for the city centre.

Finally, here is a Carrion Crow with de-pigmentation showing that there is more than one 'white-winger' in Holyrood Park today!

Gulls: no-show Norwegian and Iceland

A quick trip up the road to Alnwickhill water treatment works turned in to a long stake-out today. Soon after I arrived one of my target birds dropped in to my field of view - a colour-ringed Common Gull! For most folk, this would probably not be the most exciting of events, but it is something I have been actively looking for locally over the last couple of months. Today's bird had a white ring with black lettering, but frustratingly it moved out of view just as rapidly as it appeared and I could not be sure of the combination. I'm fairly confident that the first letter was 'J', which could indicate that it was ringed in Norway. Three cold hours later the bird still hadn't returned and I returned home disappointed, but with the consolation of having seen my first Linnets and Lesser Black-backed Gull of the year, as well as some less regular species at the site: Great Black-backed Gulls, Goldeneye and four Waxwings.

Once home I found out that I had been watching the wrong Edinburgh water-bodies this weekend - a first winter Iceland Gull had been seen since Friday at Dunsapie and St Margaret's Loch in Holyrood Park. With the light beginning to fade I decided that it might just be worth the couple of mile trip up to St Margaret's. By the time I arrived, most gulls had flown to roost and only a handful of Black-headed Gulls were still at the loch in the twilight. Never mind, it will probably return, so I read some Mute Swan colour rings in the fading light.

As I returned through the park, I paused to photograph the sunset and was pleased to notice that there was a Northern Fulmar high up over Our Dynamic Earth. Another appeared and the two birds began chasing and interacting like a pair of giant swifts careering through the twilight. It may have been cold, but it was a warming reminder that spring is not far away.

Black-headed Gulls and signs of spring

A quick trip to the nearest duck pond today, in lieu of 'real birding', gave me fifteen minutes to look at Black-headed Gulls. In particular, I was looking at the pattern on the trailing edges of their wings, having noted this bird a few days ago that had a distinct step in the black trailing edge. This bird was very distinctive in flight and I wanted to see whether this was a common variant.

There were about 140 Black-headed Gulls at Blackford Pond, Edinburgh, today but I couldn't find one with quite as distinct a step in the black trailing edge, though there does appear to be variation in this characteristic.

I did notice a couple of birds with hoods now showing quite distinctly. The hood, which is a characteristic of summer/breeding/alternate plumage develops as a result of wear to the pale tips of the head feathers. These pictures show the range of head colouration in the birds today, from almost completely hooded to almost completely white-headed.

Another sign of spring noted today were the Snowdrops coming into flower in Craigmillar Castle grounds. I think that Mary, Queen of Scots, probably missed seeing these flowers by moving away from the castle in December 445 years ago, although she probably had other things on her mind...

Northern Gannets

Interest in Gannets has been heightened this week with a report of a possible Australasian Gannet off the English east coast. In Lothian we are fortunate to host an estimated 50,000 breeding pairs of Northern Gannets on Bass Rock - for most months of the year there are a lot of Gannets passing offshore. So many that when seawatching off this coast I'd say it is normal practice to set the brain to 'ignore-all-gannets' mode.

It is possible to land on the Bass to observe and photograph the birds at close quarters, and although the trips do not come cheap, I would recommend the experience. (For trips see the Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick.) I was lucky enough to participate in one of these trips to Bass Rock in June 2007. The weather was cold, windy and overcast with heavy showers threatening. We were advised that landing may be impossible, and while that turned out not to be the case, the conditions for photography were far from ideal. No shots of gleaming birds against azure sky for me.

Here is my best shot from that day. It took about 50 minutes of a stealthy approach lying down in Gannet guano to get this image of two birds with North Berwick Law in the background. Even then I had to photoshop an awkward third bird's beak out of the right hand side of the picture. (Is that cheating? and should I have gone the whole hog and removed the three blurry flying birds as well?... )

The following flight shots of adults were taken on a pelagic trip off Newcastle in September 2010 organised by Martin Kitching.

Clearly I was having trouble getting the wings in shot...

Here are some younger Northern Gannets. The first is a first summer bird and the second a second summer bird.

It is interesting to see the difference in extent of white plumage between these two birds - just a few body feathers in the first year (above) and then head, body, lesser coverts of the upperwings and uppertail coverts in the second year (below). The latter can be particularly striking birds.

Finally, here are some slightly older birds that show predominantly adult type plumage but with dark secondaries and tail feathers. These birds appear to aged as 3rd year birds (using data from birds of known age) in Bryan Nelson's monograph although the illustrations show some other darker feathers in the body and coverts. However, a rare variant of 4th year birds is described in the Collins guide for birds with completely white body plumage and coverts.

It is birds in this plumage that can resemble Australasian Gannet or Cape Gannet. The first of these birds was photographed in June 2007 at the Bass Rock. I have tentatively aged this striking bird as a 4th year with its adult body feathers and coverts combined with many black secondaries using the Collins' criteria. Both wings had a classic piano-key look that allowed easy confirmation as a Northern Gannet. The second photo, taken as this bird came in to land on the rock, revealed that only the central pair of tail feathers were yet to moult.

The second bird, photographed on the pelagic off Newcastle in September 2010 looked considerably more interesting as it approached the boat. Only as it passed overhead and away could the extent of immature feathering on the upper and underwing coverts be seen. This would appear to be aged as a 4th year bird according to Collins, but a 3rd year according to Nelson's ringing data. Maybe both ages can show this plumage, however, notice that the underside is finely spotted with black, a feature that seems to be absent from the bird above and maybe consistent with an earlier age. The second picture shows a paler secondary on the right hand side, presumably this feather would show up as a nice white secondary in a shot of the upper wing.

So, other than the presence of the white secondary feather in the right wing, how would a 3rd/4th year Australasian Gannet or Cape Gannet differ from the bird above? Well, without direct experience of the species, I can only guess, but I would imagine that the smaller size of either potential vagrant may well be one of the first real clues to its identity. The Northern Gannet is larger and bulkier, being adapted to foraging in a colder climate.

In a view like the one above, a Cape Gannet would usually show an all dark tail but would certainly show a much longer black gular stripe extending from the base of the bill down the centre of the neck. The gular stripe of would be about twice the length of that shown in the bird above. The gular stripe is bare skin and its length allows the Cape Gannet to loose heat more efficiently in arid breeding colonies.

Separating this bird from an Australasian Gannet would maybe be more tricky, although I think that the gular stripe is narrower in that species compared to the bird above, although that would be a very difficult distinction to make in the field (and possibly is incorrect). On the other hand, the Australasian Gannet has a darker grey iris which may stand out in comparison with the strikingly pale iris of the Northern Gannet.

For more on the separation of Australasian and Cape Gannets see this thread on BirdForum, particularly for a nice head shot of both species together at a colony in South Africa.