Scottish Highlands March 3rd and 4th: Ptarmigan, Crested Tit and the Eagles

 

A long weekend in two locations across Scotland this month gave me a chance to walk in some big spaces and see some of the iconic Scottish species of birds.  Capercaillie and Ptarmigan are the last two regularly breeding/occurring British species of birds I have never seen and as such they have achieved near mythical status for me, becoming something of an albatross (which I have seen in the UK…), and though I won’t go looking for Capercaillie directly, I wouldn’t mind seeing one.  Taking the chance to visit some of the extended family based in Glasgow, we set off to have a day walking in Abernethy forest and a day climbing Glenshee.

Abernethy forest is a strange combination of what looks like ancient stands of pine, interspersed with plantation style straight lines of branchless trees set for logging.  In most of the area where we had decided to walk there was logging activity, and this immediately prevented us from seeing much – so much human activity in the woods meant that any shy birds had either relocated deeper into the tangle, or fled upwards to the tree tops.  10 hours of walking through the forest gave me good sightings of Crossbill and Coal Tit, Siskin, and mixed flocks of finches, but very little else.  I know people who look for Scottish Crossbill here, and in all probability some of the flocks I was seeing were “Scottish” Crossbill, but I’m dubious of calling them a species at all, and definitely do not have the expertise necessary to identify Scottish from Common by call – apparently the only way to definitively split the two in the field.  The whole nexus of Red Crossbill varieties, including the types (and potentially future species over the next several thousand years) associated with specific tree species globally is a minefield of identification and is where the line between being a casual birder blurs over into being an ornithologist.  I’m a hobbyist, happy to contribute to citizen science, and interested in the principles of the science, but I have no desire to require degree level knowledge in order to count a bird as a tick on my list. 

Though the science is incredible and the skill involved is mind-blowing, the DNA analysis of shrike species (for example) from droppings last year is another aspect of birding that leaves me cold: I can’t sequence a genome, and neither can the vast majority of people.  Does that mean I can’t accurately identify a bird in the field?  Or does it mean that our working definition of species is wanting in some way?  Spending some time on the pelagics off the Scilly Isles the last couple of years has brought me into contact with people looking for Scopoli’s Shearwater, a bird identified 95% of the time from photographs after the fact where a single white primary feather is the main identifying feature of a bird whizzing past at 30mph over the sea, from a moving boat.  So without a camera, most people can’t ID a Scopoli’s.  It just seems like a step too far for my own personal hobby-time.  To each their own, of course, but I won’t be counting Scottish Crossbill on the current evidence of speciation.

We heard Crested Tits a couple of times, trilling from high up, but in common with the behaviour of most of the forest birds across the day, they were often hidden in the backs of the trees.  The only place where a single Crested Tit showed itself for any prolonged period was on feeders that we had decided to avoid, but ended up chancing upon in search for a coffee to warm up.  The information centre at Nethy Bridge has feeders half a mile into the forest, and a genuinely massive number of Coal Tits were crowding them, allowing a female Chaffinch and a Crestie one feeder to share for a few seconds at a time.  Perhaps an effect of global warming, the Crested Tits seem to have paired up and headed high into the trees for breeding earlier than usual.

The second day began early, to try and avoid busy-ness at Glenshee, and beat the weather that was closing in.  50mph gusts of wind and low cloud is not what you want when you’re climbing to 950m above sea level!  Arriving before first light, the Red Grouse were incredibly vocal from the ski centre car park, and we saw dozens in the couple of hours we were there.  No sign of Ptarmigan from the car park, and, in the half-light, I decided to follow a path that inevitably took me up the steepest part of the hill.  My knees, ruined through road running in my late teens and rugby in my twenties suffered as I dragged myself up the mountain, twitching at every mountain hare (beautiful both in the heather and on the small remaining patches of snow), with no sign of Ptarmigan.  Achieving the Cairnridge, I sat for a brew/minor heart attack and scanned the scree.  Within seconds I had my eyes on a pair of distant Ptarmigan, and set off to get closer views.  Clear skies, no sign of cloud.  Four minutes later, a howling gale and a heavy cloud swaddled the entire ridge, soaking me to the skin even through my waterproofs and dropping the temperature to numbing depths.  It’s easy to forget, living in our over-cultivated and “safe” landscape that mountains deserve respect and the correct gear to explore.  Within half an hour I was frozen and decided that I wasn’t going to see a better view of Ptarmigan, so I abandoned my search and slowly took the longer, less steep route back to ground level.  Immediately the sky cleared, and Golden Eagles began to cruise the valley over the Old Military Road.

Happy with the walk, the climb, and the birds, I had one final mission – a visit to the Tomatin distillery to indulge my other passion, where I picked up two fine single malts (one a present for my dad) – a 12 year aged expression and a 15 year sherry cask.  It was on the way back from the distillery that we saw White Tailed Eagle and pulled over in a lay by to watch as it soared across the whole valley.

Scotland is a magical place.  The size of the landscape, the friendliness of the people, and the quiet in places is something often missing from a life in frenetic, overly-built upon, noisy Manchester.  

Having a good bottle of uisge beatha to help savour the memory certainly helps soften the blow of having to leave.