September

1971

When playing golf in September, migrants can swim into one’s ken quite quickly. We had just finished a very pleasant round of golf in the annual mixed foursomes competition over the Buckpool course when someone noticed the birds feeding in the grass practically outside the clubhouse windows. They were obviously waders and when general enquiries were made in the lounge, the stewardess was able to tell us that Mr McGinn, a master at Buckie High School and a keen ornithologist, had identified them as ruffs. At least we saw three birds, one ruff, the male bird and two females called reeves. Fairly unusual in this species the male is about two inches larger at eleven inches than the female. As the name indicates, the ruff, in breeding season, has an enormous erectile ruff and ear muffs and this gives the bird a thick necked appearance in flight. We saw the birds in their autumn and winter plumage with no ruff. They resemble redshanks, but have grey-brown legs, a shorter bill and a more speckled or marked back. The ruffs breed on the northern tundra and belong to eastern Europe.

Nearer home we got a wonderful view of a heron, which unusually landed on a tree near our house. We have occasionally seen a heron flying by, but never has one landed so near. Only then one realises what a huge bird it is and its posture, perched on the tree, seems to change the bird from its large floppy flight appearance.

Our September holiday Monday started off promisingly with a glint of golden sunshine coming through the early morning mist. While on my usual early morning vigil to see if there were any rabbits about, I noticed tremendous morning bird activity in the garden. Chaffinches flashing white from wing and tail played tig round bushes and trees. Seven or eight blackbirds were busy gorging themselves on berries in the gean tree, reminding me of a picture depicting the poor baker of Joseph’s dream fame, whose wares were pecked by the birds. Spotted flycatchers, which did nest after all in the garden, were working along the peas collecting insects. Flocks of sparrows were waiting on the dew to dry from the corn before starting their marauding.

Later we motored over the high land towards Aberchirder and were struck by how clear the atmosphere was and how good the visibility. The long shoulder of Ben Rines in upper Banffshire was very clear. As we topped the hill above Cullen, the Sutherland hills were so near that one imagined that with a step only in the sea, one would be across the firth at the sugar loaf of Morven. It seemed only a day or two ago that I was writing about the geese heading across the firth to the hills and now from the first Saturday of September, when I had my earliest return sighting, one can expect to see again the long skeins coming back.

We stopped in the Christie’s nursery in Fochabers and had the enormous pleasure of behaving like children let loose in a toy shop saying, “We’ll have one of these, and that one, and that one” and so on. The gardener took us around and it is fine seeing the shrubs growing in their garden-like situation instead of buying blind from a catalogue. What wonderful names they have too, like Prunus serrulata hisakura, otherwise the large double pink flowering cherry, also escallonia edinensis whis is a beautiful shrub with shiny small leaves.

Back home as darkness came down, the only sound disturbing the evening stillness was the steady throb of combines in the howe, occasionally broken by their harsh screech when something, caught in the works, brought the monster to a halt. And so this glorious day faded into darkness.

The harvest is nearing its close at least in our area. Comments of “Just a day’s baling of corn (oats) straw left”, are fairly common. If the farmer doesn’t stook his corn, then lead, in the old fashioned way, he has to wait a few days more after the barley has been harvested for the corn to ripen. This is also the season for hairy caterpillars and many can be seen making their journey across the road. “Why must a caterpillar cross the road ?” Well, your guess is as good as mine. The usual variety are the brown, hairy kind and if you have young children it can be interesting for them to see this wonderful miracle of change of form, the metamorphosis from caterpillar to chrysalis. Put the caterpillar in a covered jar with a punctured lid – paper held on by an elastic band will do – and then return to look two or three days later. In place of the hairy caterpillar one has the dark brown hard-cased chrysalis which seems somehow so different and unimportant compared to the wriggly creature that went into the jar.

Starlings gather into large flocks at this time of year and on one of the very warm days we have had recently, I saw many of them behaving unusually, doing a swallow act, while flying. Because of the heat there must have been a great hatching of flies and the starlings were feeding on the wing, darting here and there having a great time.

We took time off the other day to visit Loch Oire near Elgin and see the Slavonian grebes. About eight inches long with a short straight bill, they like bays and shallow lochs where the food grows on the surface. In summer the ear tufts and red on their sides and neck make them quite spectacular. They build floating nests too.

1972

There is sufficient grass to cut round our domain to give one enough time while on the job to contemplate that it is a task which is done at this time of year with mixed feelings. One has a feeling of relief that the growth is going back and that the grass won’t need much more attention and at the same time comes a feeling of regret that the year is slipping away. We have had some wonderful harvest days recently and given the weather ours is, in spite of our high rate of income tax, one of the finest countries in the world in which to live.

We were interested in a different agricultural activity recently. Stubble fields have been scarified by a rotavator immediately the straw bales were removed and I understand from some of my farming friends that this is an attempt to grow stubble turnips which is something which is done in Scandinavia. Turnip seed is broadcast in the old fashioned way and given a mild autumn it is hoped the turnips will grow to about one pound in weight by November or December. They can then be used for the winter feeding of sheep. On passing such land at the moment the gulls and lapwings seem to be enjoying themselves; but what the seed eaters, the pheasant and partridge, will think, with nothing much to glean, is another matter.

Many interested bird lovers including myself have recently been completing their card for the British Trust for Ornithology Atlas project. This is the greatest combined ornithological operation ever undertaken in this or any other country. When the atlas is completed, a very detailed record will be available of the breeding habits of British birds. Card columns are divided into three categories, possible breeding, probably breeding and confirmed breeding. The confirmed breeding of woodcock, redshank and capercailzie might be considered unusual for our area.

To start this week with nature on the grand scale, I would like to quote this sentence from ‘Sunset Song’ by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. “Three millions years hence out among the galaxies, with the great bear yoked to the plough, they’ll be ploughing out some fantastic furrow.” The breadth of vision and depth of imagination needed for such a picture leave one contemplating.

To return to more mundane, earthly things, at this time of year if one is observant one can see the ‘snow’ blowing in the wind in the form of rosebay willow herb or wild cotton seed. When these weeds ripen, the wind casts their seeds in great numbers over the land. It is probably the strongest weed we have. I believe it had the doubtful distinction of being the first plant to grow up on the bomb sites in London and other cities during and after the Second World War. When en masse in full flower, a bank of willow herb can present a very pretty picture.

Things have been hotting up on the roads these mornings. Yesterday we saw two young mallards crossing the road in front of us and a little further along we saw a red squirrel. Today the last day of September, we saw what the shooting fraternity would describe as a strong covey of partridge. Ten or eleven birds were on the road and as we slowed down they took off and flew only a little further down the road. On our second approach they were obliged to fly over the roadside hedge. The grass was wet and dewy and presumably they did not want to get their feet and feathers wet.
At Magpie Corner, we had to stop as a pair of magpies have returned to the place where we saw seven or eight last year. They have been missing from this haunt for many months and it was fine to see them back again.

1973

Hoist the flag, splice the mainbrace, etc, etc, a first of the season, a first in a lifetime, a fleeting glimpse of a green sandpiper. This is the bird that Nethersole Thompson waxes eloquent about. He says, “In all Britain, I know of no greater prize than a green sandpiper’s nest with eggs. These wonderful waders nest in old nests of mistle or song thrushes or even perhaps, in a squirrel’s drey.” The green sandpipers were not known to have nested in Britain until 1959. Finding the nest is obviously a job for the expert and the completely dedicated ornithologist, but seeing the bird can be anyone’s good fortune. We went for an evening stroll and passed the mill dam close to where we stay. The pond and its marshy surroundings of reeds, birches, gean, rowan and blackthorn, has been the source of many interesting finds such as mallard, reed bunting, snipe, bullfinch and even, although at its widest it is no more than fifty yards long, mute swans. As we approached the pond yours truly was chattering too loudly. From the mud bank of the pond a solitary wader flew off with a jerky flight, like that of a snipe. The bird was larger than a snipe, but smaller than a redshank. It was dark on top and had a brilliant white patch on its rump. Because of the bold contrast of back and rump we took it to be a green rather than a wood sandpiper which it closely resembles. An exciting find. It would be even more exciting to find that it was nesting in the area. After walking on about a hundred yards we returned to the pond to find three speckled ducks which also saw us and took off. They were teal, the smallest duck of the region.

It is pleasant to read that more young ospreys have successfully matured in Britain this year than at any other since they re-introduced themselves in the last decade. It may be that more falcons and harriers have bred successfully in our area too. As we went down the road one evening recently, we stopped to look at a bird of prey which had a small bird in its talons. It turned out to be a female merlin, the smallest European bird of prey. Evidently, in common with the peregrine, it was much used in falconry, especially for catching partridges. The flight of this handsome little falcon is rapid and graceful; it usually flies low and skims over open ground without any apparent effort. Unlike the kestrel, which we see fairly often, it does not hover or swoop down on its victims from a pole or electricity wire. The merlin persistently chases after its prey and then strikes. Both male and female merlins are much darker on the back than the light chestnut coloured kestrel.

At this time of year I usually clean out the blue tits’ boxes. If they are left too long then one can come across a fine hatching of earwigs in the moss and grass of the old nesting material. I have found this out in the past. We knew that both our nesting boxes had been used this year, but on closer inspection, the one on the elm tree was found to have four unhatched eggs in the nest. What had caused the bluetits to desert this clutch of eggs remains a mystery.

Now that the bag nets are off, many Banff and Macduff people possibly don’t realise how fortunate they are in having the opportunity of seeing large salmon ‘sounding the bay’, giving leaps and slapping back down on the water as they cruise round day after day, waiting for the River Deveron to rise. The fishers are busy above and below Banff Bridge and the salmon are getting desperate to take the river. When I wrote last I had seen fish jumping in the estuary from the car, but one morning I stopped for five minutes and witnessed a scene which, if it happens each year at this time, should be put on our holiday brochure as an added tourist attraction. I stood between the filling station and the black shed in Union Road and saw such a display of fish jumping as I had never seen before. Sometimes three large salmon would come out of the water at once. Sometimes one would imitate a flying fish with the length of its leap. One would stand on its tail while another went skating across the surface just like a skimming stone. Double and triple leaps were common. Fish were jumping near the shore and others were out in the bay in the direction of Whitehills. The experts say the fresh water irritates the sea lice on the fish and the fish jump to try and remove them. The fish may just jump for joy at meeting their own fresh water again and in anticipation of spawning. As I stood spellbound, swallows flew close by my head and had occasional sorties out over the sea. Some redshanks landed and became invisible on the rocks in front of me. An oystercatcher and some turnstones were feeding together and on the promontory of rock nearest Macduff, beyond some roosting gulls, a cormorant stood drying its outstretched wings. I went on my way in great spirits, considerably uplifted by what I had seen.

In the garden just now the euonymus planipes is very exotic looking with its orange lanterns and red seeds. A warm, near gale force wind is blowing from the south and flocks of birds are numerous in the garden – mostly chaffinches and greenfinches. We watched an immature pair, at about three yards range from the kitchen window, businly pulling out and eating dandelion seeds and leaving the down to float away. Something disturbed the birds; they all flew up and the magic moment was gone.

Larger birds in the wide arc of the sky are noticeable just now. We have seen large numbers of rooks busily ‘talking’ to each other as they fly past. There are, fortunately, larger numbers of lapwings about. They were scarce for a number of years.

While golfing a few days ago, it was interesting to see a pet, untrained labrador put up a partridge from the rough. The ‘pertrick’ uttering its sharp call did not go far and the dog ran along after it and every so often leapt powerfully, the primitive hunter, high into the air, trying to get above the long grass and look down on its quarry. The partridge acted as if it was drawing the dog away from where it had originally been flushed and there could have been a young covey there.

The noise of combines going late into the evening is a sign that the harvest is in full swing. It is some years since the barley has looked to be standing so well with very few fields with grain ‘down’. Possibly a shorter stemmed variety of barley is being planted. In spite of the cost of ‘tow’ it is disheartening to see straw being burnt so early in the ‘campaign’. Surely someone could find and economic use for this fairly valuable byproduct. One farmer with work interrupted by rain was clearing bales from one end of his field while the other end was being ploughed. Certainly a quick rotation and one couldn’t say he was letting the weeds grow under his feet.

1974

Not many golfers have the fine excuse when their play does not come up to expectations that they can’t play for watching the birds. That was my excuse last Saturday at least. I think it was Bernard Darwin who wrote of the golfer who was disturbed by the roaring of the butterflies in the adjoining meadow. I’m not quite so bad as that, yet.

I counted 23 swallows and martins on the wires at the Barnyards with as many again in the air, before going on to the first tee at Duff House Royal. We have seen numerous gatherings of swallows and martins in various places these last few days. Passing the area of the practice ground, I saw there were redshanks there, making their unmistakable call. Further out on the course, a mature cormorant went over, flying fairly low, and a pair of greater black backed gulls were flying over the river. About a dozen mallard were disturbed shortly afterwards and circled about and I also got a long distance glance of a kestrel flying interestedly up to a tall tree, hovering for a moment and then circling away rather like a butterfly visiting a buddleia shrub. At one point hundreds of gulls flew inland accompanied by a few oystercatchers. Presumably the tide had reached a level when food was no longer available on the shore and the mass of birds had ‘changed camp’.

1975

For anyone who is not aware of the fact, we are still in the midst of the woodworm season in September. These destructive creatures like the warm weather and are most active at this time. I know this because my garage needs renewing, as the woodworm are working in the timbers of the roof. Each morning when I open the garage doors, I see many specks of dust on the lid of the car boot. A great amount of voracious boring is going on night and day and this can even reduce the most notable edifices to being fit only for the scrap heap.

The sight of maggots in the Banff Museum window reminded me that for blind half-developed creatures, they are interesting and have a strong sense of survival. A starling had lain dead in the wooden floor of one of our outbuildings and maggots were feasting on the smelly, unsavoury remains. I removed the carcase remnants and left about a dozen maggots on the floor. When I returned after burying the remains, all the maggots had disappeared. On closer inspection I found that they had in fact wriggled into the spaces between the planks on the floor as if knowing what fate awaited them in their former exposed position.

To move from unedifying creepy crawlies to a nicer variety which still have to go through a crawly stage, we had no less than one large tortoiseshell and five red admiral butterflies on our buddleia or butterfly plant last Saturday. My daughter took some coloured photos of a pair of red admirals as they fed off nectar on the buddleia heads so we hope that the photos develop satisfactorily.

The fashionable things in the world of agriculture this season are undoubtedly the large roly-poly bales. I’m told they take as much hay or straw as twenty of the old square bales and certainly this must be more convenient, but there the convenience may end. Time will tell, of course, but I imagine they are much more awkward to use and there will be more wastage. Even to see them as hay, lying in the stackyard or in other odd corners around the farm is unusual and I’m told when they sink down they are awkward and heavy to shift. The sight of them in a big sloping field looks tempting, but I better not take my suggestion any further.

Standing out in the dusk the other evening, I was looking and listening for mallard duck flighting in the gloaming into the barley fields or just, maybe, to a nearby pond. I counted fortyone in lots of nine to a dozen. In the fairly long hot summer, unfortunately drawing to a close, it seemed to me that this was the first time I had paused to listen to the sight and sounds of the countryside. A tawny owl hooted. It was quite far away and the solitary call of a lapwing sounded nearer at hand. Practically under my feet, a field mouse was rustling in the long grass.

Tonight after yesterday’s rain all is not so quiet. The combines have stopped, but an ordinary baler is clanking away in a nearby field. Today I met a very contented farmer, if such a thing exists, and he told me that he had finished his ‘hairst’. He started on the glorious 12th and almost completed harvesting in August. No wonder he was smiling. The harvest was beyond the barn door.

The ‘miracle’ birds, the redshanks, are back in my working quarters at Transition School, Macduff, and this will be part of their winter habitat and we will be companions until the spring takes them away again to their breeding grounds.

They have red legs,
Long, thin beaks, light coloured breasts,
They are well camouflaged,
Nearly invisible on the ground,
Sometimes bobbing after they land.
A flock in flight is like snow,
The splash of white making different patterns
As they fly in formation and change direction.
A quick, rapid flight and wing beat,
Ordinary brown birds
Walking along, feeding, probing the ground
With their long mandibles,
But to me magical in flight,
Redshanks.

In watching the flock of 33, I see one limping or hopping as if to save a damaged leg. Then I see others doing the same things. At rest they stand on one leg and are reflected off the wet tarry surface. They do this ‘bad’ leg trick to get off the hard ground I think and when they reach the grass both legs come into action and they fairly race along again. Were they just too lazy to unfurl the other leg or is it just a roosting habit ? As they bathed in a wet muddy puddle, they made noises like the calling of a distant skein of geese.

1977

The garage door was needing painting and this was the job in hand. The wind had died away as it often does in the cool of these autumn evenings and all was fairly still. The call of the curlew came fairly clearly on the still air. I dashed into the garden and saw the curlew. It was being answered by another which was flying from some distance behind. They both headed northwards over Forglen Wood and that will probably be their last flight over these parts until next March – and we are only nine miles from the sea.

I came across a ‘nest’ the other day in the garden. It was on the underside of a plank in which there was a circular indentation or grooved hollow about two inches wide by one inch deep. The occupants of the nest were a mass of earwigs and when we shook them out onto the ground there were more than twenty of them in the nest. They are interesting creatures and have a purpose in nature’s cycle like all the rest.

Now that the weather is colder the cat is to be found in unusual places, hideholes that he has neglected all summer, when he basked in the summer sun or sought the shade. He is particularly fond of the grass cutting sack and will accept its comfort with great alacrity.

There is quite a large flock of lapwings feeding close by at South Bogton. As the weather gets colder they gradually move over to the Alvah parish and then right to the coast to between Banff and Whitehills as food becomes hard to get on a snow covered landscape.

The small yachts sitting in a bay at South Queensferry were like a flock of roosting seagulls facing into the wind. Pigeons or rock doves presumably, were flying around the Forth rail bridge as usual as the train came north. Cormorants were on some rocks in mid stream with one at least drying its wings. A large tanker was loadking down firth and there was the architectural wonder of the Forth rail bridge up the estuary. Into the tunnel at the north end of the bridge and the wonder was gone. Now one sees a rubbish tip and an old car cemetery, then on to the breaker’s yard at Inverkeithing. Far to the south, the Bass Rock was standing sentinel-like and its companion for height was an exploratory oil rig situated in the Firth, south east of Kirkcaldy. Gulls, oystercatchers and curlews were feeding on the mudflats north of Burntisland. A starling flying parallel to the train made one realise how fast one was going. We passed it very quickly. These notes are based this week near Edinburgh. My visit to Auld Reekie coincided with a letter from Mr Len Blyth of that city, who was interested in my comments about the ‘late’ swifts. Mr Blyth says he has noted their regular departure date, August 18th or 19th, for some years. This year for some unknown reason, there were still swifts over his house in Edinburgh on September 3rd.

A friend did me a favour the other day and took me in my imagination back six weeks to early August and a warm summer evening. My companion knows of a burn not far from Turriff where on a summer evening, if the conditions are right for fly fishing, he can get a small basket of trout with comparative ease. However this year when fishing, he told me that, as a bonus to the trout, he saw a kingfisher flashing blue as it flew up the burn. My friend, getting on in years like myself, says he as not seen a kingfisher about the area since he was in his early teens. It is to be hoped that there is a pair and they they reared young. The exotic coloured kingfisher is all too rare, certainly in our northern part of Britain. Dippers are more common on our rivers and burns.

On the Turiff golf course at the Turriff burn I saw a friendly chase or territorial squabble between a pied wagtail and the more colourful, slender, flashing-tailed cousin, the grey wagtail. We thought that one winter recently a pair of grey wagtails had not migrated, but we would not like to be too sure. The years of the eighties have shown that some grey wagtails do not migrate but stay in our area all the year round.

The autumn colours are to be seen on some solitary branches. Rowan berries and rose hips are showing fine colour. In the garden the euonymus planipes is most advanced in autumn colour with its beautiful red lanterns with their orange seeds showing. The berberis is breaking into fire, running the euonymus a close second. There are a few plums on our tree. Like the farmer’s barley, they are having a job ripening in this unusually grey-skyed, but dry, week. We have a few fine looking Charles Ross apples, but what does a nature lover do with a pair of bullfinches in the spring time that spend three days eating all one’s apple blossom buds. Well, next summer, God willing, I’ll take me one fine summer morning to a certain burn near Turriff looking for a blue kingfisher.

1980

Autumn is the time for busy early morning bird activity in gardens. Small trees, shrubs, flower borders and lawns seem to provide plenty of food. Outside our bedroom window there is quite a large gean (wild cherry) tree. As the berries ripen on it, they are eaten by the birds. The other morning on looking out it was festooned with a flock of more than twenty mistle thrushes and a few female blackbirds. I had thought that the mistle thrushes had gone south but was mistaken. One or two chaffinches, objecting to the ‘storm cocks’ tried to see them off, but there were too many of them. Why there was this jealousy when the chaffinches do not eat geans, I do not know. The branches bent under the considerable weight of the thrushes, but did not break. Under the tree a solitary, still scruffy, robin was moving about and in the flower borders greenfinches were picking up seeds.

At the coast there are still terns, fulmars and kittiwakes about, but all will be departing shortly. The other day as we were bird watching on the Deveron estuary an avian ‘light bomber’, the cormorant, flew down river and the military light bomber, the Canberra, flew by on the other side of us rather higher up. Then a yellow helicopter came to practise rescue operations, dramatically winching men up and down from the sea in Banff bay and further distracting the birdwatchers.

It all seemed to be happening at the same time and the end was unsatisfactory because the dog did not see the rabbit. I was up quite high, painting on the flat roof of an outbuilding. It was a windless morning of warm autumn sunshine. All of a sudden who should come to visit and almost want to get stuck up in the fresh paint, but a red admiral butterfly. At the same time in an adjoining field, along with young cattle, I spotted our neighbour’s Yorkshire terrier and about twenty five yards away a small baby rabbit. The rabbit was running about nibbling grass among the cattle who did not pay any attention to it. But one young stirk thought he would ‘see off’ the Yorkshire terrier which, by his way of it, should not have been there. I was trying to watch the red admiral and the dog and the rabbit, hoping the dog might see the rabbit and there would have been some fun, but the bossy stirk had his way and the little dog had to retreat. The butterfly flew away from me in a long downward glide and I was able to admire its graceful, swift flight. It is a large butterfly, almost as big as a humming bird I saw recently. (This one had come in a box from Canada.) Little wonder that red admirals and painted ladies can make the channel crossing from the continent with comparative ease.

1983

Our walk the other evening took us by some mature trees, oak, aspen, sycamore and Scots fir. There are not many aspen trees that we know of in our area. At a time of no wind, the leaves of the aspen tree always seem to be quivering. It is said that no garden is complete without an oak tree because some birds visit the oak especially collecting insects and certain insects breed only in oaks. When we passed our particular group we saw a swallow, coal tit, chaffinch, a spotted flycatcher and a tree creeper. The evening sun shone brightly on the trees and the birds were busy collecting insects. The spotted flycatcher would dart out in typical fashion after insects and then fly back to the tree. They sometimes like to perch on bare branches and when they do they can be more easily identified.

Nature’s happenings go very much according to the weather. This exceptionally hot dry summer encourages creatures and insects to our northern climes that we would not see in a normal summer. I have had an interesting report from a Mr Bowie, Portsoy, who has found an unusual convolvulus hawk moth in his garden. This powerful, fast-flying moth has probably come from the Continent, even from a Mediterranean country. The moth is silver grey in colour and has a wing span of two inches or more. They are usually seen at dusk in gardens and parks with luxuriant flower borders. The Banff naturalist of last century, Thomas Edward, wrote about finding a death’s head hawk moth in the parish of Ruthven, probably today’s Rathven at Buckie. In its caterpillar state it can make snapping noises. The chrysalis and the moth are able to squeak. On its back the moth carried the impression of a human skull, hence its name of death’s head. Not unnaturally, it was looked on with some suspicion and even terror by ordinary folk.

The sight of a comparatively small pheasant poult beside its mother on the roadside the other day made one think about two factors. First, the bad cold wet spring weather that must have put paid to many first attempts at nesting by the game birds. The pheasant chick might not have been hatched until July and certainly is going to be much too small to shoot come October when the pheasant shooting season opens. Secondly, all the burning of straw and stubble has reduced the cover considerably for game birds and one of their main sources of food, the spilled grain in the stubble, has gone. So farmers who at this time plant winter wheat, barley, oilseed rape, grass seed or what have you, will not have so many game birds on their land in future.

The dust storms seen this week were a new autumn phenomenon. Great clouds of earth were being blown from newly sown and rolled fields in the Banff area and it was strange to see a tractor shrouded in clouds of dust. Formerly these scenes were familiar only in the spring. Now with the ploughing, harrowing, sowing and rolling on dry lands, the blowing of top soil in autumn is something with which farmers will have to contend.

1984

During August and September the waders start to return to our shores after their breeding season. The other day we were watching some feeding on the rocks beside Banff harbour near the outfall sewer and we could see that some turnstones were still quite colourful in their breeding plumage. Their backs were chestnut brown, a richer colour than is shown in most bird books. Then we saw a plump, grey-backed bird which had a distinctive black eye stripe and it had quite bright orange on its breast. This was a knot, still in most of its summer plumage. There were redshanks on the rocks too. The knot is slightly smaller. This solitary bird would just be resting before carrying on its journey further south.

Country smells are not so nice as they used to be. In my estimation cattle manure and silage smells fine, but pig slurry, now that is not so nice. The other evening we passed a field of newly sprayed potato shaws and there was a really foul chemical odour coming from it.

As we passed over the burn to our local pond, a mother moorhen was taking her newly hatched brood of babies across the road. They were delightful black, fluffy chicks with big feet and red bills.

On our weekend walk at the Haughs of Meaggie there were long tailed tits to be seen. These delightful balls of fluff with long tails just flit through the trees and disappear. They often appear to play follow my leader. At this time, by the river, someone was fishing the Meaggie Pot from the Muiresk side of the Deveron. It was about here that the devil of a water kelpie was said to have got “A sair back and sair banes, cawin’ Mill o’ Meaggie stanes”.

Mr Jim Dunbar at the Loch of Strathbeg said that three pairs of ruddy ducks have summered at the Loch and had raised broods. The ruddy duck is a small stiff-tailed duck about an inch shorter than the tufted duck, it belongs to North America and has been established in the West Midlands of England for about twenty years. They are diving ducks with black and white caps and white cheeks. They often swim with their tails cocked up. Mr Dunbar thought that the Loch of Strathbeg ones might be escapees. In the late summer there have been wheatears, whimbrels, ruffs and ospreys at Strathbeg.

1985

A favourite trip of ours is westward to Nairn to play golf and see birds and one is not usually disappointed with either. In spite of the weather this year or because of it, Nairn West golf course was mostly green and not brown and burnt. Beside the course on the beach we saw as expected a bar-tailed godwit and on the course itself a wheatear. As well as these fairly unusual birds, there were oystercatchers, curlews, rooks, redshanks, turnstones, herring and black-headed gulls and kittiwakes. The godwits are waders, in size halfway between the redshank and the curlew. They like to feed at the water’s edge, using their very long probing beaks. The black-tailed godwit’s bill is straight and it shows a white wing bar in flight. The bar-tailed has a slightly upturned bill and no wing bar.

This is about the time of year when one sees wheatears, birds of passage, going through our area. They are twitchy, nervous birds, feeding on insects and in flight the give away is the prominent white rump.

1986

In the garden I saw a willow warbler and I was looking for a blackcap which sometimes appears at this time of year on the spindle tree (euonymus planipes). This shrub has beautiful autumn foliage and very pretty small purple lanterns with bright red seeds inside. The timber of the tree, incidentally, was used to make spindles used in old fashioned washing wringers.

Every so often there are magical moments in bird watching and there was such a one for my wife and I the other day as we sat in the kitchen having our morning coffee. First, a young grey wagtail appeared on the lawn. Then it was joined by a spotted flycatcher. A willow warbler dropped down from the elm tree, just like a falling leaf. A pair of blue tits chased each other through the sycamore leaves and not to be outdone, a robin came over from the side of the burn. For it all to happen within about a minute of watching was, we thought, quite remarkable.

_{The illustrations in this book are the original creations of Sheila Chapman and she retains the copyright in them (Reproduced here under licence). More information about the artist can be found at http://www.sheilachapmanart.com}