Ray Collier Highland Country Diary - Greenfinches

Greenfinch
21st November 2006

Compared to the male greenfinches, the females are rather drab in colour which helps them to be camouflaged when sitting on their open nests. Their outline is as dumpy as a house sparrow but, once a clear view is obtained, the yellow edging to the wing feathers gives the bird away. The amount of yellow elsewhere on the plumage depends on age, particularly around the head, with older birds having much more yellow. At close quarters, the faint streaking on the underparts can be seen and this is much more pronounced in young birds. The pinkish beak is large and characteristic and it is strong enough to tackle the toughest of seeds and big enough to take even the fattest rose hips with which most other berry-eating birds cannot cope. The size of the bird, and its formidable beak, means that when there is competition for food, the greenfinch normally wins. Despite a weight of around 28 gms, the bird still loses out against the pugnacious blue tit and siskin, both of which are only half the weight of the average greenfinch. With the increase of feeding birds in the garden all the year round, greenfinches are now one of the commonest birds coming to seed or peanuts. They are very persistent on feeders and an individual will sometimes sit at the same place on the feeder and just gorge itself until it is full and then it flights to a nearby perch. Their numbers fluctuate depending on the amount of wild food available and it is noticeable in some periods that some gardens have very few greenfinches. This may well be because in the Highlands in the last few years there have been a few more stubble fields left for the winter where seed eating birds can still find food as with the set-aside which also favours the birds. Once these diverse sources of food are eaten, the birds will be back in the gardens and, in colder weather in the second half of the winter, they are sometimes the commonest birds in gardens - even more so than the chaffinch. Part of the current success of greenfinches is related to the constant food in so many gardens. This means that each pair can bring off a number of broods of chicks each year from clutches of up to six eggs. They nest in loose colonies, so they are gregarious all the year round which probably helps protect them against predators such as sparrow hawks. With more birds around, at least one bird may be on the lookout for the first sign of danger and will warn the others. This means that unless we have a severe winter, which seems doubtful with such a long run of mild ones in recent years, the future of these large finches seems assured. The recent increase in tree planting, especially of broad-leaved trees, will also undoubtedly help the birds in the future. As for its current distribution in the Highlands there is a problem as most surveyors do not have access to private gardens where, because of their confiding nature, greenfinches will often choose to nest. The latest distribution map indicates the birds breed throughout much of the Highlands, although there are gaps in Sutherland and Caithness where there are large treeless areas. They breed in the Western Isles, despite the general lack of woodland and on Orkney but not Shetland. Highland greenfinches are fairly sedentary with about 90% staying within 10 km of where they were reared but, increasingly, birds are wandering south. Ringing has shown that some of the breeding birds in Norway move to parts of southern Europe.

Ray Collier Highland Country Diary - Whooper Swans

Whooper Swans
19th November 2006

Of the birds that come to the Highlands for the winter, the skeins of calling greylag geese are exciting, as are the thousands of wigeon that gather in various places around the coast. To many the biggest thrill and most majestic of them all are, arguably, the whooper swans. Perhaps it is their size, perhaps how regal they are, or perhaps because their adult plumage is pure white, but whatever the reason, they seem to represent a wildness that is difficult to explain. They can be seen in various places in the Highlands, sometimes along the coast, sometimes in the firths and estuaries and sometime in fields inland where they feed. There can be flocks of over fifty and in contrast a family party - they stay together in the winter - can be found on the smallest of lochans. They will mix with the resident mute swans, but they can be separated by the fact that the whooper has a yellow beak and a straight neck whereas the mute has an orange beak and an "S" shaped neck. Although about 8,000 whooper swans visit Britain every winter, a large portion of these stay in Scotland. The biggest concentration of them north of the border is in the Cromarty firth just north of Inverness, which sometimes holds over 500 birds. There are a few summer records of non breeding birds and occasionally a pair will attempt to nest, but successfully reared cygnets are few and far between. As to where the birds have come from, whooper swans are big enough to take large leg rings and even neck collars and the lettering on them can easily be read using a telescope, or in some cases even binoculars. The majority of these birds have been ringed in Iceland where they moult after breeding and are flightless and they are then rounded up and ringed. What is a mystery is why some migrate to Britain whilst others prefer to stay in Iceland. Once they are here, the rings have shown they frequently move some distances such as to Ireland and back. Rings are not the only thing to look for in whooper swans . Young birds can be identified because most of their plumage is grey and their numbers give an idea of what sort of breeding season the whoopers have had in Iceland in the previous summer. The bird gets its name from its call, a loud trumpeting "whoop". The commonest collective name for swans is a herd, especially when they are on the ground, but other names include game, bevy, tank, team and when in flight, a wedge. The annual County Bird Reports indicates the first of these winter migrants come to the Highlands in the middle of September and the last leave in May, so the main wintering birds are here now. In 1987, radar equipment in the Inner Hebrides picked up a flock of large birds. A plane was sent up and discovered whooper swans flying at 27,000 feet, 2000 less than the height of Everest. It was calculated that the birds would have left Iceland at dawn and would reach their destination in Ireland in a flight of seven hours travelling at the amazingly low temperature of - 48 degrees C!

Ray Collier Highland Country Diary - Surviving the Winter

Surviving the Winter
7th November 2006

With winter not far off and falling temperatures in the Highlands it is the start of a difficult time for animals. Each species, however, has different ways of coping, not only with the low temperatures, but also in obtaining enough food and sufficient shelter. Some animals - the badger for example - lay down large areas of fat which give them better chance of surviving the lean times when the ground is frozen and they cannot dig for worms. But with such a large animal as the badger there is not enough fat reserves for it not to need food on regular basis and on most nights it will go out to hunt. In the absence of live prey it will turn to carrion. Sometimes, in remote areas, badgers will even come out during daylight. A few years ago a hillwalker came across a badger at 2,000 feet feeding on the carcase of a red deer hind. In such circumstance a badger will return to the carcase night after night until the meat has all gone. Occasionally, badgers will also eat lichens and mosses if food is very short. Another much smaller animal that lays down fat is the hedgehog, and although it goes into hibernation, it sometimes wakes to feed and drink. The hedgehog is the only animal, apart from bats, in the Highlands that truly hibernates. Whilst this practice seems advantageous, it has its dangers - such as being found by a predator - and there is always the risk of dehydration. It is also unfortunate that some female hedgehogs have late litters and the babies, called hoglets, have to carry on feeding when the adults have already gone into hibernation. If you find an active hedgehog at this time of the year then simply weigh it and if it is less than one pound it needs some food to put on enough weight, otherwise it will not survive the winter. Some animals, such as the fox, will, in the right circumstances, store food, and the pine marten will do the same. This means that if either of these animals raids a poultry shed or the poultry are left out overnight, they may well kill several birds and partly bury them so they can come back to the cache on subsequent nights. It is wrong to call these blood or lust killings as the animal is simply storing the kills to survive. One way for these two animals to survive is to retreat to a warm den or sett when they are not hunting or eating. As with other animals, some of them spend a lot of time in woodland, which is often unfrozen when the open countryside is subject to frost and snow. In winter, red deer and mountain hares will move to lower ground where the weather is not so severe and the chill factor is lower. As with many other animals at this inhospitable time of year, deer will tolerate people much more than they will in the summer. This is simply a fact of survival because if the deer move off for any slight disturbance, they lose out on feeding time. One of the problems with the high red deer numbers in various parts of the Highlands is that there is not enough food to go round and many die of starvation. Roe deer are, in general, better at surviving than red deer because essentially they are still woodland deer. Whilst fencing may keep red deer out of woodland it has been said that there is no fence that can keep out the much smaller roe deer.

Ray Collier Highland Country Diary - Herons

Herons- 5th November 2006

The heron's long legs, long neck and large, dagger shaped beak mean that the bird is well adapted for stalking and killing fish. At this time of the year herons can often be seen along the shorelines of the firths, or inland by burn or loch. They will move very slowly through the shallows, often pausing for long periods - and then there is the lightning strike. If the bird is lucky its beak will be holding a flatfish or eel. In contrast, herons can occasionally be seen in fields where they will hunt for small mammals, such as mice and voles, or, if it is wet, they will find frogs. This gives an idea of how opportunistic they are when feeding. In the Highlands, over half of the herons are found near the coast, with far fewer in the uplands. This is likely to be because there are more fish in the lower sections of rivers, in estuaries and the sea. Their liking for fish has brought them into trouble with fish farmers and recently someone admitted to killing a number of herons that were raiding fish tanks. This illegal act may well be more widespread than we realise, which is unfortunate as there are positive methods of stopping the birds taking the fish as outlined in a leaflet brought out by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Herons nest in colonies typically around eight nests although the one near Inverness with over 40 nests is probably the largest in the Highlands. Many of the nests are in trees but a few are on sea cliff ledges where the number of nests are often small, even twos or threes. The nests are huge and if they are not blown down by the winter storms, they are simply added to in the spring. For such a large bird it seems surprising that they would nest in the tops of often quite tall trees, but despite their long legs they are surprising nimble amongst the branches At one time it was thought that there were two holes in each nest so that the birds could lower their legs through when sitting on eggs. Herons are one of the earliest nesters and many have eggs in their nests in February. As the chicks grow a heronry can be very noisy -and the smell can be almost overpowering. Away from the heronry a group of herons is called a sedge or siege. Herons are widespread on the west and south west coasts and on the Western Isles, but they are scarce or local in other areas. Resident birds are boosted by immigrants from Scandinavia, mainly from Norway, where the herons are partly migratory, presumably because of the cold weather. In this country pollution and persecution along with land use changes, such as afforestation, affect the numbers, but it is very cold winters that have the most effect. This is readily indicated by the fact that even at the end of the 1960s herons were still recovering, in terms of numbers, from the severe winter of 1962/63. In bad winters, herons that are inland simply move to the coast- but if these areas are also frozen, many die through lack of food. Herons have therefore gained from the series of relatively mild winters we have had in the Highlands in recent years.