Author: backwoodsman61

Backwoodsman can arrive at themes for posts by serpentine routes. A recent watch of the BBC documentaries “Britain’s Housing Crisis: What Went Wrong?”(Parts 1 and 2) reminded me of an article entitled “Underwater Living” in the London Review of Books (5 January 2023) by James Meek, in which he discusses housebuilding in the aftermath of the 2013 floods with a focus on Boston in Lincolnshire.

I’ve never read a piece by James Meek which I didn’t enjoy thoroughly and this article was no exception. In the last few paragraphs, Meek goes wildfowling with a local chap (named Cross) on the saltmarsh where the Witham estuary meets the Wash; the chap fills his freezer with the ducks and geese which fall prey to him, turning their meat into burgers and sausages to con his children into consuming it. On the trip with James Meek, he bags  three wigeon. There are many interesting snippets about birds in the article, including “The wildfowlers are on good terms with the RSPB. Cross shoots legal birds: wigeon, teal, mallard, shoveller, greylags, pink-footed goose, Canada goose.”

This got me thinking about the relationship between Teal and Wigeon; both are Anas species, crecca in the former case, penelope in the latter. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation website tells me that the shooting, and sale of carcasses, of both species is permitted from 1 September to 28 February inclusive (and at any time of year in Scotland). The list of permitted species contains a few surprises which will be returned to in future posts. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation has a Mission – “To promote and protect sporting shooting and advocate its conservation role throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” I was interested in the conservation role: “People know that our countryside, and the wildlife it supports, is under increasing pressure – but how much more pressure would there be without the influence of shooting sports? Nearly £250 million is spent on conservation every year. BASC strives to have this recognised by politicians, the media and the public.”

I had a good poke about the BASC website looking to learn more about the “£250 million…spent on conservation every year.” I wondered who was spending it, and I still am.   I did find “Since January 2020, we have awarded more than £350,000 in grants for a range of projects.” And then “The Waterfowlers’ Network was awarded a grant of £50,170 for Project Penelope, which tracks Eurasian wigeon through their annual migration cycle to support effective conservation efforts.” A highlight emerged from the early part of the study; a tagged Wigeon was shown to migrate ten thousand kilometres during the course of a year (from Russia via Finland to the east coast of the UK).

My RSPB book has four hundred thousand Wigeon, and two hundred thousand Teal in the UK in the winter. We see Wigeon coming up the Clyde in the colder months and look forward to their whistling calls. The top location has been Irvine Boating Pond; the ducks graze the grass in large numbers (I’d say hundreds). My last two visits have failed to turn up any Wigeon at all, though I have seen them in the Harbour. Irvine is much busier than it used to be, probably due to the amount of car parking and number of dog-friendly coffee shops on offer. I’m very fond of Wigeon; their colours are beautiful with the rich brown and cream of the head set off by the pure black and brilliant white of the secondary and greater secondary covert feathers. I found a really useful document called “Guide to the age and sex of European ducks” which contains some excellent photographs of wings and technical descriptions of the feathers. I have not seen the metallic green speculum of a Wigeon in any of my photographs. I can just about make out the vermiculated or dusted feathers.

Wigeon will not tolerate close approach by Backwoodsman; if on land, they head for the water in a stately fashion. If on water, they glide away.

Backwoodsman no longer attempts to approach them so all these Wigeon images were obtained from quite a distance, as were most of my Teal images. We’ve seen Teal at Kinneil, at Bowling and Cardross on the Clyde and at Irvine but my first image is from a very chilly Aberlady.

No missing the speculum here, or the other extravagant colours. I got lucky at WWT Slimbridge; the reserve has some extremely well-placed viewing screens overlooking good habitat. A cold February visit allowed me to photograph this pair foraging and resting in the reeds. I even had to switch the focal range of my lens onto its lowest setting, something which rarely happens.

At this distance (five or six metres), the stunning detail can be captured. You might notice some variation in the colour of the speculum; these are neither different birds nor are we seeing artefact from image processing. I think the differences arise from small changes in the angle of incidence of the light which hits the image sensor from the feathers. Feather colours will be a subject which winds its way into a future post.

Teal and Wigeon seem to get by on vegetable matter (seeds, stems, leaves and roots) which brings both species to the shallow edges of watercourses where they can reach food by upending.

I tend to see Wigeon first; if I look hard, I might also see some Teal but never in the same kind of numbers. Somewhere, someone is looking at a large flock of Teal, a sight I would love to share.

Backwoodsman’s first sight of a Little Egret was at Cardross in front of the sawmill. Before the acquisition of the best zoom lens, Backwoodsman would travel with the just the birdscope and no camera. There across the mud was a tallish and poised white bird; through the scope, it was clearly a Little Egret. It was dithering its leading foot in a tide pool to disturb prey, probably crustaceans or small fish. It was a surprising sight to Backwoodsman, but not to a passing member of the RSPB Helensburgh group who was quite blasé about it. According to the British Trust for Ornithology:

“With its yellow feet, which are used to flush prey when feeding in shallow water, the Little Egret is a distinctive member of the heron family.

Little Egrets first bred in Britain in 1996 and since then have successfully colonised much of southern Britain and Ireland. Most of the breeding colonies have been established within existing Grey Heron colonies, the two species nesting alongside one another. The winter distribution is also currently restricted to the southern half of Britain & Ireland, despite the fact that young birds are known to move some distance from their natal site.”

BTO data shows that Little Egrets were rare vagrants until ca. 2000; the population then grew rapidly with the latest estimate running at around one thousand pairs. My RSPB Handbook of British Birds has broadly similar numbers, identifying an influx in the autumn of 1989 as the start of the UK population, with the first birds breeding in Britain in 1996. It would be interesting to know which aspect of climate change has brought about the expansion in their range.

A subsequent visit to Cardross at the end of November in 2021 with the heavy camera allowed some long range shots to be had. The absolute quality of the images is questionable; though nicely lit, the bird was remote (and not allowing closer approach). Nevertheless, there are hints of some beautiful feather detail and texture, if only the bird could be settled twenty rather than one hundred metres away across the shining fields of mud left behind by the ebbing Clyde.

An opportunity for closer approach arose in Belfast in March, though Backwoodsman did get into some trouble. We had taken the train to Holywood and walked along The Esplanade past the Kinnegar Army Barracks heading for the RSPB Belfast WOW reserve. Photography is banned along this stretch of coastal path and Backwoodsman was getting an itchy shutter finger. There was a small pond near where the Esplanade met Shell Beach and on the pond was a group of roosting waders, some ducks and a Little Egret. Backwoodsman approached, partly for photographic purposes and partly to take advantage of the cover offered by a conveniently placed bush (nature calls in many ways).

Some images were had, the birds grew restless and Backwoodsman retreated; blocking his retreat was what looked like an RUC retirees awayday. The skyline was filled with newly arrived cars and a dozen sturdy figures clad top-to-toe in dark green (if not bottle green). They weren’t happy – Backwoodsman had almost disturbed an Icelandic Gull (tick!). Visually, a Little Egret is more interesting by a considerable distance. No arrests were made.

The Egret was still there on the return trip, but it was restless and took to the wing briefly – the image is blurred but the shape is very pleasing.

They really are entirely white feathered. The Featherbase website publishes images of the entire complement of feathers recovered from dead birds and the Little Egret provides a beautiful (if monotone) subject for this treatment.

Backwoodsman’s closest approach was had at WWT Slimbridge in the Waterscapes Aviary; there were several Little Egrets in repose. They looked a little bored, and possibly in some degree of moult (they were a little off-white in places) but the herl is striking in these images and the translucence of the flight feathers in the lifted wing is very pleasing.

For numbers of birds, Aberlady LNR is Backwoodsman’s top place. We saw a group of five on one summer visit (no photographs, alas) but a September trip allowed some images of Little Egret choreography to be had. These images will not bear much expansion (they are grainy, Backwoodsman made a major ISO error in his excitement) but the elegant gait of the birds is conveyed well.

In an idle moment, Backwoodsman looked to see if Egrets had been treated by Japanese artists and found this immediately; the late Ohara Koson produced this marvellously crafted woodblock print entitled “Egret in the rain”. Backwoodsman had expected to find a screen painting in the Rinpa style perhaps, but looked no further; this seems a perfect way to end the post.

Mr Baldwin, the Head Porter at the college to which I belonged while studying for my PhD, had a memorable turn of phrase. I came across Mr Baldwin one morning in the Middle Combination Room, working his way through the pigeon holes into which postgraduate mail was delivered. He wished me a good morning and informed me that he was checking up on some of his backwoodsmen. Finishing a PhD could take a long time in Cambridge in the nineteen eighties and students would vanish from college for years at a time. I liked the application of the term; I don’t think that he meant that the subjects of his inquiry were necessarily uncouth or rustic, but rather that they were rarely in attendance, like certain peers at the House of Lords. I filed the term away for future use. This Backwoodsman has been back in the trees for a while, looking after his stills. Here are some more stills which he wishes to share.

Recent activity on the cage feeder in our window has prompted this post, but alas, the feeder is not in a position which allows good photographs to be taken of the eight Blue Tits which regularly mob it and strip it of its payload of RSPB Super Suet Bars. However, we do have a Birch sapling close to one of our windows, and it is a favoured perch for Blue Tits throughout the year, unsurprisingly, as it between our  two feeding stations. In addition to the Super Suet Bars (saturated fat, peanut flower, ground mealworms), they have access to Sunflower hearts (polyunsaturated fat, Vitamin E or α-tocopherol) at the second station. The Tits snatch one or two seeds from under the noses of the goldfinch posse, and take them back to the Birch, where they pin a seed beneath a foot and eat.

Our household view of bird feeding is fairly simple-minded – small birds in particular stand a good chance of starving in the colder months when the seeds and the invertebrates have gone, therefore we should feed them to try to carry them over from one year to the next. Our finch population shifts ca. 300g of Sunflower hearts every day so we are regular purchasers from Pets at Home (that came out as Pest at Home when first I typed it) and the RSPB. We also feed throughout the summer months; we reason that the adult birds will be worn out from incubating and rearing young and will need an instant hit of something nutritious, and the fledglings will need to get off to a good start independent of the availability of grubs.

“Killing with kindness: Does widespread generalised provisioning of wildlife help or hinder biodiversity conservation efforts?“, a 2021 paper from Shutt and Lees, presents a chastening perspective. We are clearly guilty of “trying to help ‘[our]’ wildlife, both for the sake of the wildlife and the pleasure value of wildlife interaction” as Shutt and Lees have it. The paper was picked up by Victoria Gill from the BBC and featured on the Inside Science podcast (at 11:42) – much of the discourse is about the competition between Blue and Great Tits (ubiquitous and a bit extra), and Marsh and Willow Tits (being pushed around and in decline), not a conflict we are able to witness in the absence of the two less competitive species from our area.

While we are clearly sentimental fools, at least our offer is nutritionally balanced. Plummer et al. looked at the effects of three different feeding regimes (unfed versus fat versus fat with Vitamin E) on a Blue Tit population. Here is a chunk from their conclusions: “The findings of this study highlight some potential mechanisms by which impacts of winter feeding may be carried-over to influence events in the subsequent breeding season. To our knowledge, this study provides the first evidence of a carry-over effect of winter food supplementation on the phenotypic condition of wild birds during breeding. The findings also strongly suggest that winter supplementary feeding can alter the phenotypic structure of wild bird populations. The provision of vitamin E appears to have helped to alleviate physiological trade-offs, such that individuals in poor phenotypic condition in the lead up to winter had improved survival and/or a capacity to reach a condition threshold necessary to reproduce during the subsequent breeding season. Furthermore, the opposing impacts of provisioning fat alone compared to fat-plus-vitamin E on physiological condition suggest that negative carry-over effects of winter feeding may be the consequence of a fat-rich, unbalanced diet, as has previously been hypothesized. This is particularly relevant given the substantial variation that exists in commercially available fat products; from high-quality foods enriched with antioxidant-rich nuts and seeds, to low-quality foods bulked out with nutrient-poor fillers such as wheat husks or ash. These findings, therefore, stress the importance of considering the nutritional composition of supplementary food sources and suggest that more research is required to determine how supplementary feeding may contribute to population size trajectories.” I guess they’ll let us off, considering our a nutritionally-balanced offering.

A British Trust for Ornithology research team recently asked the question “Declines in invertebrates and birds – could they be linked by climate change?” concluding that “Our ability to understand these impacts is hampered by a lack of extensive long-term monitoring data for many invertebrates, and invertebrate data collected at scales that can be related to bird populations. We call for collaboration between entomologists and ornithologists, both non-vocational and professional, to support new empirical research and long-term monitoring initiatives to better link changes in insect populations and birds to inform future decision-making. This will be particularly important to understand likely future increasing climate change pressures on birds.” Let’s hope that all gets done. Backwoodsman would suggest that the disappearance of increasing amounts of suburban land under decking, astroturf and concrete, and councils’ tendencies to tidy habitat out of existence may also have influences on bird populations by removing their food sources entirely. I guess we’ll carry on feeding while we can.

A typical Blue Tit lifespan is three years and they breed at one year old; this plot was constructed by the BTO from ringed bird recovery data and indicates a roughly fifty-fifty chance of a Blue Tit making it from one year to the next. Backwoodsman does not get statistics (having failed it at university) and would probably treat this set of points by putting a trendline through them, indicating that perhaps Blue Tits were revelling in a slightly higher chance of survival with each passing year.

In natural settings, Blue Tits nest in tree holes and lay an average of of eight to ten eggs once, sometimes twice, a year. There are around three million territories in the UK. Around here, any sort of crevice seems to be considered as a potential nest site. I imagine they are very broad-minded when it comes to nesting material – this pair look like they were gathering down for a lining.

The RSPB services and monitors a considerable number of nest boxes in the Kelvingrove Park and Blue Tits are adept at using them – this individual was prospecting in January.

We have always thought that pairs of birds visit us through the winter and it appears that even though their lives are short, mate retention does represent their main breeding strategy.

Come the early summer, we start to get the fledglings, with the Birch sapling turning into a daytime creche and feeding station. The young become independent rapidly and then the cage feeder becomes very busy. Of the eight young that visit just now, four may make it through to breed next year; if our established pairs survive, next year could be very busy. Backwoodsman hopes so.

I remember Lapwings wheeling up and away from the arable fields of south west Lancashire as we drove in the family car towards Ormskirk or Southport, or perhaps towards the Saracens Head on the Leeds Liverpool Canal for some fishing. Agricultural practice was different fifty years ago, with stubble burning finishing the season and releasing towering plumes of smoke above the Lancashire plain. My RSPB book identifies a change of sowing time for cereal crops as one of the factors responsible for the decline of the UK breeding population – by fifty percent over the last twenty-five years, numbers echoed by the British Trust for Ornithology. Cereal crops sown in autumn (the current practice in raising these crops) are simply too tall by the spring for the Lapwings to use as cover.

We seem to be quite well placed to see Lapwings here in Glasgow. The River Clyde (between Erskine and Bowling), RSPB Barons Haugh, RSPB Lochwinnoch and Frankfield Loch clearly all have what Lapwings like (mud and wet grassland I guess). Visits to Kinneil Lagoon have also afforded good sightings. All of these venues can be host to large numbers of birds, but at considerable distances from the photographer, unless special circumstances prevail. For example, a frozen Barons Haugh allowed Backwoodsman to get quite close to  a group of birds for a little while.

A strip of open water outside an empty Causeway Hide held the birds in repose; these images were taken with a rather shorter lens than Backwoodsman is able to use currently so the viewer will see some grain. The hide was stormed by a party of very noisy green-clad twitchers shortly after these images were acquired and off went the Lapwings.

The iridescent green of the Lapwing’s back is tricky in photographs. On a grey morning or afternoon, the colour is a little flat; this large group from Frankfield Loch hints at what might be seen in better light.  When the sun hits them, their colours are stunning; the second image, again from a frozen Barons Haugh is truer to the ideal colour palette of a rich burnished metallic green with purple highlights.

Lapwings are Plovers but their wings are so unlike those of the related species. Grey, Golden and Ringed Plovers have angled pointed wings, the classic wader shape. Lapwings have broad rounded wings with spatulate ends. They are most impressive on the wing in their tumbling flocks.

Lochwinnoch hosted a breeding pair this year; two chicks could be seen foraging on the mud when Backwoodsman visited at the end of July. The image was obtained at maximum reach and it really will not stand closer scrutiny.

While the chicks were busy foraging, the adults were watchful and running  air defence operations against the speculative fly-bys of corvids, and making some extremely attractive shapes in the process. Once again, these are long range efforts, so Backwoodsman has processed them in PowerPoint to make the grainy originals into “digital prints”.

Backwoodsman has managed to get close to Lapwings a couple of times only. At Cardross by the sawmill, there is a very narrow strip of land which stands above all but the highest tides and Lapwings will sometimes rest there in the Sea Aster or on clumps of weed while they wait for their feeding grounds to resurface. Lapwings are usually very nervous but they have stood for the camera. These images are possibly of juveniles – the plumage is rough and the crests relatively short but in the absence of an adult bird in all its iridescent glory, they’ll have to do.

I cannot remember where my first sighting of Black-tailed Godwits took place but Kinneil Lagoons is possibly the strongest candidate. “The lagoons were created when the intertidal zone was reclaimed in 1969, when a seawall was built along the seaward side as part of the Kinneil Kerse landfill site operation. The lagoons are linked to the Forth through a series of large pipes in the seawall, which allows sea water to come in and go out with each tidal cycle. The resulting saline lagoon/mud habitat is an extremely rare habitat on the Forth.” The Grangemouth industrial complex looms large in the near-distance beyond the lagoons as the Forth makes its way north west towards the Kincardine Bridge and Alloa.

We visited the site in September and November 2018 and saw very large numbers of Knot and Black-tailed Godwits. Most of the photographs from these trips are rotten but three are just worthwhile because they show the numbers of birds, and the black and white tails and wings of Limosa limosa.

We are hoping to revisit the site again soon, though with some trepidation  – Falkirk Council was accused of destroying some nesting sites when it carried out some “work” at the lagoons in 2021, according to the Falkirk Herald. However, Knot and Black-tailed Godwits go outwith the UK to nest, so it is to be hoped that this unique site is still attractive to wintering waders. We also hope that we can still get to it, and will not find it beyond a fence.

Very few Black-tailed Godwits breed in the UK – 53 pairs according to the RSPB. One crazed spaniel could probably see off the lot. Schemes have been started to boost numbers of the birds. Project Godwit points out that “Historically, black-tailed godwit numbers declined in the UK as a result of land drainage and habitat loss. The population of godwits in the fens today is small and vulnerable, and appears to be limited by poor breeding success”. Project Godwit is “undertaking research at the Nene Washes (just outside Peterborough in East Anglia) to understand what is driving the productivity of black-tailed godwits at this important site.” The project is “headstarting” birds on the Nene Washes. Black-tailed Godwits are a Schedule 1 species under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which means that they are “Birds and their young, for which it is an offence to intentionally or recklessly disturb at, on or near an ‘active’ nest:”  Under licence, eggs are collected and incubated by Project Godwit. Hatchlings are kept warm and hand reared, then moved on to polytunnels where they can forage before being released. The RSPB is involved in similar work. I found a nice YouTube video which summarises the actions.

While few Black-tailed Godwits breed in the UK, many visit for the winter. The data dealing with Black-tailed Godwit migration is rather good; there are quite a few ringing and tracking schemes active and some of the birds are even known by name.

To summarise, “the UK’s breeding black-tailed godwits winter in Africa, while the birds that spend their winters on the south coast of the UK [and Scotland] nest in Iceland. Those that nest in Iceland are actually a different subspecies (Limosa limosa islandica) to those that breed in the rest of Europe (Limosa limosa limosa)” according to the Wildlife Trusts. These birds number ca. 40000 according to the RSPB. The European population is of the order of 100000 pairs, so the contingent wintering in the UK is continentally significant. There are also of the order of 10000 passage birds which use UK wetlands for a feed en route; these birds are making the journey across from continental Europe before heading south to Portugal and West Africa according to Project Godwit.

Black-tailed Godwits turn up on the Clyde at Cardross; one winter afternoon, we followed the waterline towards Ardmore Point and came across this group in the light of the setting sun.

We’ve seen them at Montrose Basin, another great site for wintering birds.

I’m very fond of this image from the Shell Beach in Belfast, mostly because of the texture provided by the cockles.

The Godwits won’t usually allow close approach so getting images with some real detail requires special arrangements, like hides or zoo conditions: bring on the WWT! I have images from WWT Martin Mere (from a hide) and WWT Slimbridge (from the Waterscapes Aviary). The first two images were taken at Martin Mere; the black and white tail and wing feathers are clear to see.

In the next two images from Slimbridge, there is just a hint of the characteristic tail and wing colours. There is a confusion species – the Bar-tailed Godwit, which has a slightly upturned bill. The bills of these birds look straight across all the images.

However, there is a trick which Godwits of both species might pull on the observer – it is called rynchokinesis. Professor Richard Chandler has written about this extraordinary business in British Birds (R. Chandler, British Birds, 2002, 95, 395-397): “One’s first experience of a wader deliberately bending its upper mandible is a surprise; at first sight, birds’ bills seem to be such rigid structures. The upper mandible has, in fact, some flexibility, and waders can occasionally be seen exercising this flexibility, no doubt a form of stretching, a comfort action to keep the feeding apparatus in good working order. Cranial kinesis is the ability of birds to move the upper mandible in relation to the skull (Burton 1985). It takes two forms: pro[1]kinesis, in which the entire upper mandible hinges where it is attached to the skull; and rhynchokinesis, where the base of the upper mandible is fixed rigidly to the skull, and bending takes place some distance along the mandible, nearer the tip than the base. In the case of rhynchokinesis, the bone structure of the upper mandible allows the flexibility.” So the upper part of the bill bends slightly upwards – Professor Chandler doesn’t say this but his short paper has some good images. I haven’t even seen this behaviour, never mind photographed it; I will certainly be looking for it in the future.

The Black-tailed Godwits should be with us for a while now; I will try and find some soon in the hope that I can find individuals in the glorious rufous breeding plumage (above), or in some vestige of it (there is just a trace in the image below). Where will they be? Time to revisit Kinneil Lagoons, or possibly RSPB Barons Haugh, where I might be really lucky and get close to some Lapwings too.

I look forward to the arrival of the geese in the autumn; they herald the coming of colder weather. The fishing will be harder but the landscape will be more beautiful and after a few decent frosts, less full of unpleasant biting things (clegs, midges, ticks). From my seat on the Avanti, I have seen geese flying in from the West in huge numbers, usually around where the line passes close to the Solway Firth. I am always moved by the sight.

Looking for a kindred spirit, I groped blindly towards the shelf of Canadian fiction and Faye guided my hand towards a beautiful edition of Ethel Wilson’s 1947 novel Hetty Dorval, illustrated with lino-block engravings by Gus Rueter. She showed me the frontispiece , and then took me to page thirty eight where the two main characters, Frankie and Mrs Dorval are riding out from Lytton, when:

“We came out on the point of one of the hairpin turns and my ears, which were used to country silences and sounds, heard that sound that will thrill me till I die. I reined Maxey in at once, and quite forgetting the importance of Mrs. Dorval, pointed up and said, “Look!” Mrs Dorval reined in, too, and said “What? Where?” She shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up as I did. She could not see as quickly as I could that out of the north came a thin long arrow, high in the sky. Then her eyes picked up the movement of the fluid arrow rapidly approaching overhead, and the clamour of the wild geese came more clearly and loudly to us. The valley of the Fraser lay broad below, lit by the September afternoon, and the geese, not too high, were now nearly overhead, travelling fast. The fluid arrow was an acute angle wavering and changing, one line straggling out far behind the other. It cleft the skies, and as always I felt an exultation, an uprush within me joining that swiftly moving company and that loud music of the wild geese. As we gazed, the moving arrow of great birds passed out of sight on its known way to the south, leaving only the memory of sight and sound in the still air. “God,” said Mrs. Dorval. Then, “What a sight!”

Very sadly, Lytton (in British Columbia) was destroyed by a huge wildfire in 2021.

I have always assumed that the geese I see from the train are heading in for the winter; the Caerlaverock and Mersehead reserves on the Solway Firth advertise good views of wintering geese. I had also assumed that some of them were Canada Geese, and that Canada Geese came to us from Canada… This jolly map shows the migration of Canada Geese in North America. I have failed to find anything similar for the European populations. The British Trust for Ornithology was helpful, as usual.

“This introduced species is now widespread across England and Wales, but has a somewhat patchy distribution in Scotland and is localised in Ireland. Native to North America, the Canada Goose was first introduced to Britain in the 17th century. UK numbers have more than doubled since 1994, the result of predator-free nesting sites, good feeding opportunities and low hunting pressure. While North American populations are highly migratory, those here are largely sedentary. However, many individuals make a significant moult migration to favoured sites, such as the Beauly Firth, where they complete their annual moult.”

It seems that my train geese are probably other species entirely, and that the Canada Geese which cross my path spend the whole year with us. I have photographed them in many of my usual locations; they are a good size guaranteeing a decent image at relatively long range. Their colouring is very subtle and close examination of the feathers reveals some wonderful textures.

Wilson’s description of the birds in the air is wonderfully evocative so I will start with some images of flying birds. We were walking between Cardross and Ardoch when this group overflew us; there are around seventy birds here. They weren’t describing a fluid arrow, but they were only flying a short distance from one grazing site to another.

These geese, photographed from just by the sawmill at Cardross, were “lit by the September afternoon”.

I was able to follow a group as they headed for the water; the light is poor (a grey, overcast day) but some of the wonderful texture on the upper wings is starting to emerge and it begins to sharpen as they come in to land.

This feeding group, though just offshore, was quite nervous of the camera. I did not approach more closely.

In urban settings, Canada Geese can grow bold. At the University of Birmingham Vale Hall of Residence site, the students who lived in the Wyddrington Hall would “revise” for their summer examinations around the lake which lay at the centre of the site, my wife-to-be among them. However, their studies would often be interrupted by the Canada Geese which had taken the site for their own and become quite aggressive on their territories. At Hogganfield Loch, the Canadas allow relatively close approach, in the winter at least. I like this useful scaling image with the tiny moorhen, the larger Goosander and the seriously chunky goose. At close approach, the textures of individual feathers are revealed.

I wonder if this pair are making plans for later in the year?

I travelled to RSPB Lochwinnoch in July, not expecting too much from the visit. As I looked at one of the reedbeds from the Channel Hide, I became aware of the heads of Canada Geese rising slowly into view. Soon, the birds stepped out with their young and the families began to forage.

I had missed the really tiny goslings, but it was delightful to see these slightly more mature and robust-looking individuals. The pair of birds I had stayed with had produced eight goslings, an excellent replacement rate even if not all eight survive and breed themselves. Canada Geese are seen as a bit too successful in some areas and licenses to control them can be had. As they are not eating my crops, I can celebrate them with impunity and share Frankie’s exultation at their sight.

Cormorants get a bad press. This Danish chap has them as “The most hated bird in the world.” Hey, get in line! We’ve feral Pigeons, Magpies and bin-bag shredding and chip-stealing Herring Gulls to process before we get to you. This short film made about the Avon Roach Project (anglers) states the case against the birds, though with a distinctly Brexity “Euro-Cormorants, comin’ over ‘ere, eatin’ our English Roach” whiff, alas. When I used to fish the Forth and Clyde Canal, I would be told “you won’t catch anything here, pal, too many effing Cormorants” on a regular basis.

The BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) is informative and measured about anglers versus Cormorants (though slightly euphemistic at the end of the last sentence). “Cormorants were once entirely coastal in habits but we have seen an increasing trend for inland breeding, a behaviour first documented here in the 1950s. Our population is made up of birds from two different races, one of which – the continental race [my italics] – is responsible for the colonisation of inland waterbodies. Cormorants make use of regular roosting sites, with some individuals remarkably faithful to these over time. The expansion inland has brought the Cormorant into conflict with commercial fisheries and anglers, and the presence of these birds has not been welcomed by all.”

The Avon Roach Project film blames the decline of the finest natural Roach fishery in the UK on the influx of Euro-Cormorants. Cormorants eat about 0.5 Kg of fish a day and they can swallow large fish but the main damage is done when they catch a lot of small fish, which cannot then grow to replace the older larger specimens which die through natural causes (or possibly from being dropped on their heads by specimen hunters from the South of England).

The Avon Roach Project film was urging anglers to lobby their MPs to introduce legislation to allow the control of Cormorants. Their campaign succeeded; it is now possible for fishery owners to apply for a licence to kill Cormorants though BTO research published in the Journal of Ornithology in 2013 concluded that “The key questions of whether Cormorant control has the desired effect of reducing predation at fisheries, and how cost-effective it is compared to other measures, remain to be answered.”

The Scottish Government has an interest in what Cormorants (and Goosanders) are taking from the nation’s rivers and through the Marine Directorate, has studied the stomach contents of birds which have fished four of the important game rivers, publishing the results in 2022. Their interest is piqued, at least in part, by commercial concerns.

Freshwater angling is big business in the UK – particularly for Carp in England, and Salmon and Trout in Scotland. During the financial year 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022, the Environment Agency sold over nine hundred thousand  fishing licences in England (we don’t have them in Scotland), generating an income of over twenty million pounds. Some of this income is spent on fish breeding which enables the restocking of the major river systems with native species. This licence income is a relatively small amount compared to other spend. A government press release from 2018 stated that recreational angling puts very close to one-and-a-half billion pounds into English economy; this had edged closer to two billion pounds in a 2019 report from the Rivers Trust. The bulk of this spend arises from English anglers enjoying seventeen million fishing days per annum and spending on average thirty-five pounds on bait, tackle, day tickets, and travel on each of those days. It follows that a bit of lobbying muscle arises from this spend; the shooting of a few Cormorants may seem like a modest concession when billions are changing hands.

I’m always quite pleased to see Cormorants, even when they might be taking the silvers from under my nose. They just look so marvellously adapted to what they do. Sometimes on the canal, I’ll see a big swirl in the water and I’m thinking that I’m seeing one of the canal’s legendary carp and then a Cormorant will emerge a few metres away.

There is usually a Cormorant or two on the Kelvin; I found this one by the Botanic Gardens bridge. There are some stone pillars, which look like they used to support a bridge, further upstream above the weir in Maryhill, and I found this pair of birds resting up. We’ve seen them there a few times.

They favour the Dundas Hill end of the canal – the lamp standards which tower over the M8 seem to pass muster as a place to rest.

From there, it is a short flight to the Wakeboarding Park which offers a range of great perches and is probably full of small fish.

Plumage is being dried off in this image; when dry, the feathers on the back of the bird are beautifully patterned.

I like the distinct layers of plumage in this image.

The mask and hooked bill are so reptilian; the facial colours (the eye, the base of the bill) are very striking. Thinking of Cormorants as essentially black, I was surprised to see the white stubble on these birds.

Seeing numbers means a trip to the seaside; a recent visit to Stevenston revealed a large group. We had gone there hoping to see this old pipeline decorated with Sandwich Terns but it was taken by Cormorants this time.

The only confusion species for the Cormorant is the Shag, but there’s no point looking for a Shag in the Toon (well not this kind, ho ho) because they have not colonised inland. I have pored over these recent Stevenston images and believe that they are a mixture of adult and immature Cormorants. The immature birds of both species are paler than the adults and have quite a bit of white around the head, but the adult Shags have no white on the face. This group I saw on Mull seems to be made up entirely of Shags – none of the (darker) adult birds have any white at all and their foreheads rise more steeply from the bill than do those of Cormorants.

The Avon Roach Project has restored the Roach to the river through an innovative DIY breeding programme, as reported in The Torygraph in 2018, with large specimens being caught again. Being a huge fan of make-do-and-mend myself, I am so impressed that the project managed to set up an effective fish breeding programme using bits of old keepnets. I don’t know how the Cormorant issue was resolved in this corner of Hampshire. The Project’s last posting on the birds can be found here.

I am now tangled in a thicket of ideas about naturalness, invasiveness and wildness, and about biodiversity versus monoculture, and the balance between management and laissez faire, which arises from the change in Cormorant habits. It may be some time before I can emerge.

There is always a tipping point with these posts – Backwoodsman collects images over an extended period of time and eventually, manages to find just a few more which convince him that he has something worth showing to third parties.

Wrens are a delight. It is said that they are very common; my RSPB book says “One of our most numerous species with an estimated 8.5 million territories in the UK”. Over one Wren per ten citizens; how nice it would be if the ratio were inverted. The RSPB website suggests that there are 11 million wren territories. They didn’t feature in the top ten in a 2016 BBC feature or in the 2022 RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch which means that the average punter doesn’t see them very much (too busy looking at the “Reconnecting with Nature” App, I expect). In that case, we ask, how is it known that there are so many of the little jewels flitting about?

A mere 10g of avian dynamite, a two year (average) lifetime in perpetual motion and voice, ticcing, dipping, darting, singing more loudly than anything else gramme-for-gramme and exploding from foliage, generally just before you get the autofocus on and release the shutter. So there it is; they are an absolute bggr to photograph. All that energy and pure living packed into a tiny frame which never quite stops moving, and which blends seamlessly into most natural backgrounds. You have to be lucky to get one in the camera at all, never mind a proper photograph. I read that they spend a lot of time on the ground – there is probably a cat for every Wren, which may explain why Wrens don’t last very long. Or do they just wear themselves out through having elevated heart rates for protracted periods?

Of extreme flying things, bats may have very fast metabolisms with heart rates of 750-1000 bpm, and Hummingbirds clock in around 500-1200 bpm. I despaired of finding a range for Wrens and then, tra-la, a Science article from 1945 in which Troglodytes aedon, the American cousin of our dear creature appears in Table 1 on the first page, and has a heart rate range of 450-950 bpm which is not even top of the range for the small birds in the study. For now, I’m blaming predation and cold weather for the premature mortality of these tiny things (vide infra).

Cardross has a great Wren territory at Murray’s, the ultimate project house on the west coast of Scotland. I can usually find a Wren foraging in and out of the front of the comedy sea defences and if I’m sitting down and having a cup of tea, the Wren will show me some moves before it becomes concerned about my presence and retreats into cover. Decomposing seaweed must offer an extensive range of foodstuffs to a foraging Wren. I hadn’t seen this tall stretching-and-leaning posture before.

I particularly like this bouncing Wren image – it is slightly fuzzy but the shape is adorable. If you had to come up with a thumbnail sketch of a Wren, you might reproduce this marvellous tail-up posture with its crisp right angle.

The walk away from Murray’s usually leads up Geilston Lane towards the level crossing; one spring, we found this Wren set off beautifully by the emerging foliage. We looked at each other for a while – the Wren probably needed a rest amidst its frenzy – before it sped away.

In the LRB of 15^th June 2023, Philip McDaragh published “The Wren, The Wren”. The fourth stanza is:

The wren the wren

was a panic

of feathered air

in my opening hand

so fierce and light

I did not feel

the push

of her

ascent

away from me

All that oomph in a 10g frame. I can’t imagine how the poet came to have a Wren in his fist – I’m consoled by the thought that his grip on the Wren was purely imaginary.

Just above Irvine, we came across a wind-shaped and thorny thicket with Stoats (no pictures, too quick, curses) and then a Wren which had a great instinct for photogenic perches. It is said that Scottish Wrens are a bit heavier than their English counterparts to help them withstand the higher number of frost days in the Scottish winter.

They are only 5% heavier though; I guess the average Sauchiehall Street Greggs customer allows themselves a slightly bigger buffer in anticipation of the Glasgow winter.

 Wrens seem to eat most things that crawl, fly and wriggle. I think this Wren was probably nest-bound with this attractive grub. Which brings us to the tipping point images.

Faye came home the other day to tell me that she had encountered three tiny Wrens in Claremont Gardens; off we went with the camera. Sure enough, there were three fledgling Wrens in the basement area, making a huge amount of noise. Two were still grounded and scuttling and one had managed short flights and landings and adhesion to vertical surfaces (walls, glazing bars).

An adult was trying to look after the brood, what a job. There is something really monstrous about fledglings clamouring for food.

Those of you with children may feel it echoes aspects of your own experiences. I watch this kind of spectacle and think about all the cats in the area, and I worry. I hope the Wrens have a trick or two to get their youngsters away from harm.

The Shetland Wren is a different race and we found a few on Sumburgh Head, including one servicing a very noisy nest in a wall (the sun is setting so the colours are odd).

The Shetlanders are said to be darker but I’m really not sure I can tell the difference from this image (the best I could get with the kit then on field deployment). There is also a St Kilda variant; this article describing a small population discusses aspects of predation by cats (of adult birds) and mice (of eggs), and does not find decisively against the predators.

One day, I will sit down to “The Wren: A Biography” by Stephen Moss and learn much more about this spectacular species.

The Great Crested Grebe was almost a mythical beast in my childhood birdwatching days – not unlike the Avocet. I never thought I’d start to see them when I moved to Glasgow. We’ve found them at Lochwinnoch (the RSPB identify this reserve as a good place to see them) and at Dams-to-Darnley but the best sightings have taken place at Hogganfield Loch where floating “Bio-Havens” have been installed to help boost their breeding successes. Several pairs attempt to breed at the Loch each year; the UK breeding population is of the order of 5000 pairs according to the RSPB. This doesn’t seem like a large number and I feel very fortunate to be near several local sites where the birds can be seen. In winter, the UK population rises to around 20000 birds; I’ve seen several at Lochwinnoch during the colder months but have never known if I was looking at incoming wintering birds, or fresh birds from the summer breeding season. Unusually, there doesn’t seem to be any ringing data from the BTO. The Danish Bird Migration Atlas has Danish birds heading for the Ijsselmeer (in the Netherlands) and the Black Sea, with some being recovered close to the English Channel. Perhaps the birds which winter in Scotland come from still colder parts of Scandinavia?

Hogganfield Loch is large enough for birds to get well away from the busy shore; it is shallow, weedy and full of fish and has reedy margins. It boasts an island which is marked on maps as a bird sanctuary, but foxes have clearly made it out there.

One slightly misty morning in March, we saw an individual bird fishing near the island, and shortly afterwards, we found a pair involved in what looked like the beginnings of courtship.

They were some distance away so the image is grainy but you can see that one of the birds has the head feathers and ruff raised in display. Julian Huxley spent two weeks watching Great Crested Grebes on a reservoir near Tring in Hertfordshire; he wrote an influential paper on their behaviour and presented it to the Zoological Society of London in 1914. He noted that the Grebes had an extensive repertoire of moves, and that these continued long after pairing – it follows that courtship is not the best description for this behaviour. Huxley used his observations to modify Darwin’s ideas about sexual selection. A retrospective in Nature discussed how Huxley’s ideas have stimulated subsequent work in the field.

Later, we saw one bird making the other an offering of weed. There is a classic image of these exchanges – Huxley drew it and many photographers have captured it – not me, alas but I felt very fortunate to catch them doing anything remotely like this on my one-off visit. This is my best image of the event.

We visited Hogganfield Loch recently and we found two adult birds and two chicks; each adult was very busy feeding a chick.

The chicks were demanding food noisily – I made a recording. There is some unwanted noise from the wind, other park visitors, traffic and sirens but I hope you can get a sense of the insistence of these small birds.

The clamour peaked as an adult surfaced with a small fish. At this point, the chick would surge across the Loch, parallel to the surface to claim its morsel. All this activity took place quite close to the shore in the shallower water, a good place to find small Roach in the summer months. I can’t usually get this close to these Grebes – they usually see me coming, show me their backs and glide away.

The motion of the chicks across the surface was interesting – adult birds usually dive to escape intrusion and I’ve never seen one moving in this way but I’m sure they could. Their legs are set a long way back on the body which makes their movements out of the water very awkward but it is probably excellent for propulsion through the water.

I was pleased to get the classic fish pass from adult to chick – so pleased that I processed quite a few images. I like these two best.

Clearly, the Hogganfield birds had had a successful breeding season. We had missed the tiny stripy chicks, but I was pleased that some had survived beyond that perilous stage and appeared to be thriving in their suburban home.

July has been a good month for us to visit Shetland, but we have always set off with more than one eye on the weather. It has been fairly kind on each of our three trips – on no occasion have we spent a single day looking at the wrong side of the window pane. I imagine it can be a bit grim when the weather closes in. I’m reminded of a trip to Orkney I made when a student in London. I had travelled north on a Sleeper train which was much delayed and I missed my flights. I was waiting at Kirkwall airport to begin the final leg of my journey, a flight to Westray. A chap brushing up in the terminal building asked me where I was going. He considered my response: “Aye”, he said, “it’s a grey, lonely place.” There were days when the weather seemed to roll in like a curtain blocking out all the light and I’ve always dreaded a similar experience on Shetland. I guess we’ve had a few near misses.

The ferry takes a long time and I’m very glad that we’ve been able to fly there. Sumburgh Airport is really close to the Sumburgh Hotel, and to the RSPB Sumburgh Head reserve. The reserve visitor centre turned up in an episode of the BBC series Shetland in which it was pretending  to be an hotel (Jimmy Perez met one of his many hotties there for an intimate aperitif) – it made quite an attractive one.

The coastal path starts in the hotel grounds and makes its way towards the Head, avoiding the road and offering great views of the headland which rears up to the south. The reserve has dry stone wall boundaries – just as well really. The cliffs are precipitous and it would have been easy to get carried away mid-photography and fall hundreds of feet to the sea, because there was much to see on the cliffs, and at their feet. There were Guillemots, Fulmars and Kittiwakes but the punters had turned out for the Puffins, which were rather conveniently present right at the top of the headland with their feet in the turf.

Our first visit took place in 2017 – this was my first trip to see Puffins, and it was very exciting. But I was a bit anxious – would there be any Puffins there when we visited? I had only seen them on the television and was a little sceptical about their confiding nature. I though we might glimpse them before they flew away or plunged into their burrows, but they were pretty straightforward to photograph. Some posed nicely while others called.

Most visitors to the reserve stayed close to visitor centre and car park; we went slightly further afield and were surprised to find this group atop a wall. We came across Puffins elsewhere on the main island; anywhere with suitable cliffs seemed to hold at least a small population of breeding birds. We also saw rafts of Puffins on the sea a couple of times (no pictures of the appropriate standard, alas) – these were likely to be fresh birds, not yet ready for breeding, and went about their courtly rituals seemingly oblivious of observers..

All of our visits have taken place around my birthday and its imminence prompts me to make this post. A second stimulus was provided by the BBC’s Your Pictures Scotland in the form of several images of Puffins with Sandeels (mostly from the Isles of May). You’ll have noticed that I don’t have the money shot – a Puffin returning to the nest with a bill-full of food. Not negligence – we never spotted such a bird over three visits, which was a bit of a worry. Puffins were flying out to sea, and back in to the cliffs, so where was the food?

Their main prey is the Sandeel  (Scottish waters contain five species). Kittiwakes also favour these small fish and Kittiwakes are not doing well, so how is it going with Sandeels? The RSPB tells us that “Sandeels are disappearing due to dramatic changes in their plankton diet.” Warmer seawater results in many species moving northwards  – if this means that the plankton are no longer abundant around our coasts, then the Sandeels, which don’t seem to move too far from where they mature, and need fairly shallow water, don’t get to feed. Sandeels are oily and very nutritious and provide the perfect food to get small seabirds growing quickly. If the Puffins and Kittiwakes can’t find Sandeels within range of their burrows and nests, they are forced to fly further out, or rely on less nutritious fish species. I became interested in this during our 2019 visit when the breeding colony seemed a bit lethargic and not entirely sure what it was about. I wondered if they were failing to find food.

I remembered my interest in this scenario when an e-mail arrived recently from Scottish Greens telling me that “A new consultation to be launched by the Scottish Government will consider proposals to end commercial fishing for sandeels in Scottish waters, a big boost for Scotland’s puffins and other iconic seabirds.” The Scottish government has been interested in ways of curbing this trade for several years: the then Scottish Rural Secretary Mairi Gougeon promised to investigate ways to stop “industrial” sandeel fishing by Danish and Swedish fishing vessels in Scottish waters (ca. 2020).

This e-mail came in just before the news that the Scottish government had scrapped its controversial plans for Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) which appeared on the BBC website on 29^th June. I was confused but it seems to be a question of extent. I quote: “As part of the Bute House Agreement – which brought the Scottish Greens into government in a historic power-sharing deal with the SNP – Holyrood ministers had committed to designate at least 10% of Scotland’s seas as HPMAs by 2026. It meant that all forms of fishing including recreational catch and release angling would be prohibited in selected sites. Seaweed harvesting would also be banned, no new marine renewable energy schemes would be allowed and the laying of subsea cables would be restricted. Managed levels of swimming, snorkelling and windsurfing would be allowed.” HPMAs were what  the Scottish fishing industry and Fergus Ewing were really unhappy about.

About 37% of Scotland’s seas are already included in Scotland’s Marine Protected Areas (MPA) These areas are managed for the long-term conservation of marine resources, ecosystems services, or cultural heritage, which sounds great. In passing, it would seem more sensible to have basically the same acronym for both situations, modified by a prefix, rather than the messiness of HPMA and MPA. Nevertheless, Sandeels are caught commercially, 94% of the take going to Danish boats according to The Sunday Times (“Puffins starve as Danes grab UK Sandeels”, Jonathan Leake, The Sunday Times, 22^nd July 2018) in a slightly Germans-towels-and-sunbeds -nuanced moment.  Their oil (Sandeels, not Germans) is extracted, or they are turned into fishmeal for use in agricultural feed, or possibly both. Quite a lot of them are caught – the Danish quota for 2023 allows around 200,000 tonnes to be landed. The Danish fishing industry viewed this quota as “reasonable”, which probably means they’d have accepted considerably less.

I have lifted this map from the story in The Fishing Daily (which reminds me of that august journal “The Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide“, well known to some of you). The Danish quota for area 7r (Shetland) is zero tonnes; there is a substantial part of area 4 which is closed to sandeel fishing. You would hope that these controls might look after at least some of Scotland’s Puffin and Kittiwake colonies. I mean, if you’re a Puffin hanging in Shetland, it would appear that you have a fair bit of area from which to gather your Sandeels, unless they really have gone from those waters because of the warming sea. There must be plankton around Shetland because there are cetaceans. The Firth of Forth also looks like it has a buffer, unless the Sandeels have moved quite a bit further north into area 4 where they can be fished for.

I’m probably reaching unreasonably optimistic conclusions from this back-of-an-envelope bit of ecology – the RSPB has produced a detailed briefing document in which it sets out a series of measures which might help the seabirds and I will work my way through that in due course and try to understand the problem properly. Puffins certainly travel; there is data from geolocator studies which shows that some long journeys are undertaken.

I hope to return to Shetland in the near future. There is much wildlife to enjoy besides Puffins, and some truly memorable coastal scenery.