Trip reports
Local outing
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
We were delighted that the gales from the tail-end of hurricane Katia which had dominated the previous two days had abated somewhat, although the sea was still white-capped. This didn't deter gannets from spectacular plunge diving, but we did notice that the young birds chose to dive at a 45º angle, rather than vertically.
The rocks near the Torness walkway had a range of gulls and waders: 40+ golden plover, numerous ringed plover, curlew, turnstone, oystercatcher, and black-headed, herring, common, greater and lesser black-backed gulls. Walking south along the beach we had very close views of sanderling and bar-tailed godwit, which allowed us to see clearly their complex plumage. While looking out across the rocks at cormorant and red-breasted merganser we almost missed a pink-footed goose landing in front of us. A skein of pink-foots flew over some time later. It took us a while to identify which terns we were seeing, but finally decided on common, arctic and sandwich. Near the stream we saw wheatear, meadow pipit, grey wagtail, and more of the pied wagtails that seemed to be everywhere.
Heading back towards Torness we added redshank, eider, goosander, kestrel and guillemot. We stopped to lunch in a sheltered spot, enjoying the warm sun and watching the gannets which were also feeding. Here we were joined by a robin, and Mike located a linnet. From the walkway we had great views of the birds already seen, and added dunlin. For a change of habitat we went to Dunglass Dene but, disappointingly saw very little - great tit, pheasant, carrion crow and rook. Jay and blue tit were heard but not seen. Most of the group headed home from here, but four of us called in at Tyninghame as the weather was so good. We saw flocks of many of the species seen earlier in the day, but did add grey plover to our list.
Val Donaldson