|
|
|
|
|
||
|
Bird-watching
at night? It's not that far-fetched an idea
Have you ever been birdwatching at night? Well it may not be something you have thought about doing before. It’s dark of course, isn’t it, so what’s the point? In Orkney we are lucky that for much of the year it doesn’t really get pitch black dark. Even in winter, the skies are often clear and star-lit or the moon is out, or maybe the bright lights of the Merry Dancers are on show, and it is quite easy to see. The amazing thing about birds is that they are often very active at night and many wildfowl do a lot of their feeding and calling at this time. Ducks, geese and swans feel safer on or near water under the cover of darkness, so they often come in to roost on wetlands. The Mill Dam RSPB reserve on Shapinsay is a wetland and a great place to visit at night. What can you expect to see and hear? If you arrive at dusk, just as it is getting dark and sit patiently, you may well soon be aware of the cackling calls of geese in the distance. If you look out carefully, you may see skeins of greylag geese winging their way towards the reserve from their feeding grounds on the fields. As they approach the wetland, the lead birds come in lower with their characteristic flip-flop flight pattern, enabling them to lose height rapidly and check out the area for possible hazards. If they feel safe, they will continue down and skid-land on braced feet onto the water, bringing with them the rest of the flock. Through binoculars which magnify the available light in the gloaming, this can all look most spectacular and combined with the noise of the birds, can be an unforgettable experience and well worth the effort of trying to time your visit for this special time of day. Whooper swans at night In winter, from October to April, whooper swans are in residence on Shapinsay, with often up to 100 birds. They take advantage of our relatively mild winters away from their breeding grounds in Iceland.
In recent years this flock is probably the largest congregation of whooper swans in Orkney. They take advantage of rich feeding on the grass fields of the island. So if you are lucky at dusk, along with the geese, you might expect to see whooper swans coming in to roost trumpeting “oggle oggle oggle” noisily, as they reaffirm contact with one another. As large white birds, they are easy to see even in poor light, as they swim about and often continue to feed around the margins of vegetation. On a still, calm evening their calls echo in the valley and can be heard several miles away. On your own in the hide, it can feel quite eerie watching their ghostly images on the water and listening to their trumpeting calls. It never fails to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up and bristle. I was once sitting in the hide one early October evening and in flew about 20 whoopers. They were the first I’d seen that autumn and the commotion was deafening. They had presumably just flown in and Shapinsay may have been their first landfall in the eight or nine hours that it takes them to fly here from Iceland. They were obviously delighted to be back “home” in Orkney and seemed to be congratulating each other on their achievement. What a racket ducks make! Okay, I hope you have wrapped yourself up warm, put on the thermals, and have got out your flask of hot coffee or tea, or perhaps even a wee dram of Orkney whisky. The show has only just begun!! Now bird-watching becomes “bird-listening”. What was that “grrrrrr” and then that penetrating “whheeeeeeeooo?” Keep listening, there are all sorts of strange noises down there. It takes experience, patience and practice to identify which birds are calling. Given time and perseverance, you will soon learn the sound of male wigeon, with its loud whistling “whheeeeeeeoo”, often answered by the gruff “grrrrrr” of the female. Most folk will already know the “quack quack” of stock duck or mallards, it often seems like they are responding to a series of good jokes, “hahahaha”. Then there is the nasal “took took, took took” rhythmically-sounded, low notes of the shoveler, a beautiful duck with a spatula-shaped bill, dark chestnut sides and green head.
Their extra-large bill makes them appear quite distinctive and you might separate them from other ducks even in poor light on account of this feature alone. Our smallest duck is called teal, and it has a bright green flash in its wing. Outdoor clothing manufacturers now describe this colour for their garments. Teal make a lovely, plaintive ringing “pleep” call, often repeated and once heard and recognised is never forgotten. Light bulbs go “plink” when they break! Now it may be the effects of the wee dram, I’m not sure, but surely that was the sound of a light bulb just breaking. It is an unmistakable sound, and they always go just when you switch on the light, don’t they? Ah well, there is no electricity at Mill Dam. No light in the hide, what have we heard? “Plink.” There it goes again. No, no, it’s obviously not a bulb blowing. It’s just the explosive sound of a coot. Coots are plump water birds with sooty-grey bodies, black heads and white bills and frontal plates. They defend their territories fiercely, swimming menacingly at intruders and charging them. Not for the squeamish
Here’s a bird with a wonderful array of sounds. If you hear what sounds like a squealing piglet or, even worse, a pig getting butchered, or what sounds like a very distressed person about to drown in the mire, well it’s a water rail. They also make emphatic “jipp jipp” calls and they call very much more at night than in the day. They are very difficult to see, even in the day, and you can count yourself very lucky if you do see them. Mill Dam is a good place to try to see one, as they are often in the sedges below the hide. They are closely related to the corncrake (old name land rail), which is a rail of drier areas, whereas the water rail likes wetlands. Water rails have blue/grey bodies and barred flanks, a long red bill and are very slim so that they can move easily between the fronds of thick vegetation. Easy to visit The reserve is very good in the daytime too! To see the ducks at their finest, a spring visit is probably the best, in April, May and June. However, a winter visit will reward you with the biggest numbers of water birds. These often include large flocks of wading birds such as curlews or “whaups”, redshanks or “watery pleeps” (does anyone actually call them this?), lapwings or “teeos”, and hundreds, sometimes thousands, of ducks and geese. So I hope you feel stimulated to visit Mill Dam Reserve and maybe explore other delights of Shapinsay. The ferry from Kirkwall goes from the Shapinsay slip, on the west-side of the harbour, six times per day. The journey takes about 25 minutes and you can see some interesting birds from the top deck if you just take a look. The island of Thieves Holm, about half way across, now with its new navigation light on top, and the waters around it, are often good for divers, grebes, long tailed ducks, tysties and cormorants in winter, and in summer you’ll see eiders, greylag geese and fulmars. At Shapinsay pier there is a notice board of things to see and visit on the island and a map to orientate yourself. It is only a mile to the hide from the pier. Walk or cycle up through the village and along past the old gas house and then the community school along the north shore of Elwick Bay. After the school, take the first left sign-posted to the Mill Dam reserve up the hill, past the council houses and electricity sub station on your right. To your left, over the stane-dyke, you will see the farmland of Balfour Mains and the woodland surrounding Balfour Castle. From the road you will see a large loch on the farm, and it is always worth scanning with your binoculars or telescope for good birds. Soon the reserve entrance appears on your right. There is a bike rack where you park your bike, or if you come by car there is parking for four or five cars. Take time to admire the newly planted shrubs which are trying to get established in the car park area, and if it is a nice day, pause a moment to get your breath back at the picnic table and have a drink and a snack and enjoy the sounds of nature. If it’s not such a good day, take welcome refuge in the hide at the bottom of the asphalt path, about 50 metres from the road. About the Reserve The reserve was bought by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds or RSPB in 1993. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the wetland was used as a source of water to power a grain mill at Elwick. In the late 19th century the natural valley was dammed by the Balfours. They had a 100-metre-long stone wall built in a crescent shape at the south end. This dam can hold back a considerable volume of water. A sluice plate in the centre of the dam can be raised to allow release of water. In the 1950s, part of the mill mechanism broke and it has not operated since. The mill is now owned by a potter who makes fine Raku pottery. In early 1994, a hide was built on top of the bank above the wetland, affording quite sensational panoramic views of the 40-acre wetland and its birds. Nowadays the dam and sluice mechanism is used to control water levels within the reserve, to create optimal conditions for the birds at different times of year. So, for example, in winter a ratio of about 50:50 open water to vegetation is maintained to provide safe feeding and roosting areas. In spring the water level is lowered a little to give more areas for birds to nest and in autumn as much water as possible is released to create muddy margins for wading birds returning from their arctic feeding grounds to feed. Best breeding birds In Britain there are estimated to be about 40 pairs of nesting pintail. This is a smart, cryptically coloured duck. The drakes have liver-brown necks and wing flashes, grey body and a long tail, but the females, like all ducks, are more difficult to identify. They are much daintier and more slender than female mallards, and often have markedly orange heads and necks. Mill Dam has hosted up to five nesting pairs of this lovely duck, and so is one of the most important breeding sites for the bird in the UK.
Altogether, ten species of duck breed. These include one of only two places in Orkney where pochard ducks nest, and where shoveler, gadwall, mallard, teal and tufted duck also breed in good numbers. Five species of wading birds breed. These are lapwing, oystercatcher, curlew, redshank and snipe. In recent years, little grebes, (or “little footy arses” as they are sometimes affectionately known, as their fluffed up rears look like they have just had a boot up the backside), have started to nest successfully, building floating mats of reeds as nests. These birds are some of the most northerly nesting little grebes in Britain. The most obvious nesting species are the hundreds of black-headed gulls. Their numbers fluctuate from year to year, but it is invariably the largest colony of the species in Orkney. In June, young chicks can easily be seen in the nests below the hide and the noise from the adults can be quite deafening. Some facts and figures The reserve is nationally important as a refuge for its flock of wintering whooper swans. It is also really important locally for its gathering of a wide variety of breeding and visiting water birds. Altogether, 31 species of birds have bred, of which about 22 species breed each year. By spring, 2004, 122 species of birds had been recorded at the reserve. This is a fantastic number for a wetland, considering that it is not very attractive to woodland birds and other passerines (perching birds), which make up the bulk of our native avifauna. More unusual species that have been recorded include red-necked phalaropes; summering Slavonian grebe; green-winged teal and American wigeon; osprey; Bewick’s swan; Mediterranean, Iceland, glaucous and little gulls; Canada and pale-bellied Brent geese; and waders such as black-tailed godwits numbering over a 100 birds in breeding plumage in autumn. The hide is a good place to see Orkney’s birds of prey, especially hen harriers. Every day in winter they hunt over the reserve, putting up ducks and waders in huge frenzied flocks, spectacular to watch. And to finish? There are lots of other places to explore on Shapinsay. You could go down to Vasa Loch in the west or over to the Ouse and Lairo Water in the north for more wetlands. You could go out east to wander the cliffs and heather moorland, or just wander the lanes and see where you end up next. If you really do want to try night-time birding then you could stay over, or charter a boat back to Kirkwall. I dare you! |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
©
The Orcadian Limited, Hell's Half Acre, Hatston, Kirkwall, Orkney, Scotland
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
