From Gordon Shepherd
Stravaig, a verb of Scottish/Irish origin:Â to wander about aimlessly.
The robin has vanished from our garden and I hope its absence is temporary. Sadly, the number of small birds visiting the garden feeders has declined significantly. Others tell me that their gardens are bereft of many of the birds that used to cheer their view from the kitchen window. There have been some highlights, a pair of bullfinches picking away at the dandelion seed ‘clocks’, protected from the lawnmower by the wet weather and my inertia. They reminded me of the childhood game of telling the time by the number of puffs it took to clear the seeds and their wee wispy parachutes from the stalk.
The bullfinch is a striking bird with its black cap and white rump, seen while flying. The male’s deep red breast is muted to a rich pink on the female. Other garden pleasures seen have been a full house of newly fledged tit families: long-tailed, blue, great and coal. The blackbirds are regular attendees with the dunnock and wren less so.
As well as there being seemingly less birds visiting the garden, the paucity of bees, butterflies and other insects is quite scary. A great deal of nature depends ontheir pollinating activity.
The discovery of nesting eider ducks just outside the railings of St Andrews Castle gardens was a pleasant surprise last year and we were pleased to see so many again recently. The ducks remain motionless on their nests and don’t seem bothered by our quiet presence. One nest that had been fledged revealed the lovely soft down lining over the twigs and seaweed base. There were abundant fluffy ducklings gathered in a ‘creche’ close to the shore below, watched over by their various mothers, the largely white drakes gathering farther offshore.
We walked on the West Sands on a sunny but very windy day when the tide was very far out. The west wind blew the dry sand over the hard sand where the tide had retreated and this ‘magic carpet’ phenomenon creates a quite surreal spectacle.
In among the many mallard ducks at the Law Mill Pond on the Lade Braes, there has been a moorhen’s nest which appeared to be built up to sit above the water surface. The chicks, balls of black fluffy feathers with a red beak, have to swim when they jump from the nest. Once on land, their relatively long black legs give them the impression of being wee feather dusters!
Stravaigin to the East Neuk, we were delighted to see the many dorsal fins of a pod of bottle-nosed dolphins quite close to the shore from Pittenweem and the sighting was shared with a family whose children were delighted with their first-time experience.
On a trip to Tentsmuir, we were pleased to see a lot of butterflies from the path south from the car park to the Goosepools (a wetland area to the west of the inland path through the dunes towards Reres wood). There were common blue butterflies – I managed to photograph a colourful female, small and large white and meadow brown. There were few birds to be seen although we enjoyed a glimpse of some goldcrests, Britain’s smallest bird, high in the pine canopy and there were many hirudines (collective name for swallows and martins) – swallows, house and sand martins flying low over the water catching insects and occasionally dipping for a drink. The brown and white sand martin’s flight is the most difficult bird to follow with binoculars with its frequent changes of direction and height. This ‘jizz’ sometimes help with its identification in low light or at a distance.
We enjoyed seeing many wild flowers on the dunes and those that we weren’t familiar with, we could identify with the app, PictureThis, which is a pleasure to use. There were too many to list here but my favourite is the blue harebell. Sea rocket, haresfoot clover, and lady’s bedstraw were other highlights.
On a visit to Morton Lochs, the red squirrels were not as many as I’ve seen there before but they demonstrated their intelligence at the green feeders that have perspex windows and a hinged lid which the squirrels lift to access the fodder. Apparently the grey squirrels, thankfully, don’t have that cognitive capacity! From the hide were seen a juvenile coot – young birds can often be a challenge to identify and I am happy to refer to my trusty app for help. The little grebes or ‘dabchicks’ were busy diving for small fish and other slippery prey and all three of the hirudines were on the wing with the larger, sharp-looking swift sharing their airspace. There were many wild orchids by the path and a rather moribund six spotted burnet moth – a black daytime moth with red spots.
Turning to the skies, mid-June, the northern lights, aurora borealis, gave us a rare display for this far south. The pinks, purples, reds and greens created a magical display. According to Wikipedia, past folklore reveals that many aboriginal peoples of northern Eurasia and North America share similar beliefs of northern lights being the blood of the deceased, some believing they are caused by dead warriors' blood spraying on the sky as they engage in playing games, riding horses or having fun in some other way.
There was a pleasant surprise for bird watchers at the Eden Centre, Guardbridge towards the end of May when four spoonbills were seen. These are heron-like birds and were first thought to be the little egrets that are regular visitors to this site. On closer observation, these long-legged white birds were seen to have long black beaks terminating in the flat round ‘spoon’ and a crest behind the head like a feather mullet. To see these and other vagrants from the European continent are what motivates and delights birders in their hobby, but even the common or garden birds make stravaigin such a pleasure.
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