Waders and rewinding in Edinburgh

This week I went up to Edinburgh for work. Usually I stay in the New Town, which is lovely, but this time (mainly because I drove up rather than took the train), I stayed down by the old docks on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth. Rather like London’s Docklands, Edinburgh’s dock area has undergone significant redevelopment in the past few decades; the former industrial dock area now boasts modern apartment blocks and so on. Leith has, by all accounts, been gentrified. 

I was staying at the approximate point where Leith meets Newhaven. As I was there for work and work is further along in Granton, my commute became a rather nice seashore walk.  I was glad I took my binoculars and bird book.

Down on the shore were various waders; those very distinctive Oystercatchers, a dozen Knots in winter plumage (surely a bit late for them?), a few Turnstones looking for food among the gulls, a couple of Redshanks and a few small ones which weren’t Turnstones. Waders aren’t my strongest suit by any means, but I was determined to figure out what these ones were. Black legs and bill, grey-brown back, white underparts. Dunlin, I reasoned — like the larger Knots, still in their winter plumage. 

Close to my hotel was Lighthouse Park, located on the small peninsula of land that was originally the western breakwater for one of the docks that comprises the Port of Leith. By the early twenty-first century this was the site of some property development comprising of apartment blocks, presumably rather pricey. This development, called Western Harbour, stalled in 2008 as a result of the financial crisis, with some of the planned sites undeveloped save for some access roads and half-dug foundations. Fascinatingly, nature has taken over at these places, now known as the Western Harbour Ponds. I spotted a Mute Swan, a pair of Mallard and many Goldfinches. 

Fenced off, these areas have rewilded — what were would-be building sites are now a cluster of small wildlife havens, within easy reach for local residents keen to appreciate nature. Two of them are in fact ponds, while the other two are wooded. Alas, a sign on one of the fences proclaimed that they are currently at risk — property developers are once again interested in the area, for obvious reasons. But it looks as though some local people would like to keep the Western Harbour Ponds as they currently are — and a good thing too. Green spaces are an important thing in the modern city. 

The Friends of Western Harbour Ponds website describes the Ponds as “a wonderful example of urban rewilding — a haven for native plant life, insects, bats and waterfowl … It has also become a very special place place for local residents and birdwatchers, who come to reconnect with nature, watch the wildlife and enjoy the tranquility of this ad-hoc blue-green space in an otherwise densely populated part of the city”. This visitor from London certainly enjoyed a few moments of tranquility before walking to work. I signed the online petition on the spot.

But my birding was not over yet! Looking out to sea, I saw something white and swimming. Another gull? There are many, many Herring and Lesser Black-backed Gulls around! But this looked to be something different. Always worth a closer look. Good job I brought my binoculars. 

Turned out, it was a male Eider! Fantastic spot. His female counterpart surfaced while I was looking. I have only seen Eiders once before, and that was a couple of years ago and not far from Edinburgh (just along the coast at Yellowcraig Beach), but I had not thought I’d see a pair at Leith docks. The following morning, just to show that this was no one-off, there were two pairs of Eiders swimming in Newhaven Harbour. 

 

A rewarding visit to a part of Edinburgh not previously explored! An area I’d definitely like to return to; I just hope that the Western Harbour Ponds will still be there when I do. 

Coldfall Wood

At some point last year, I purchased a book called Birdwatching London. Written by David Darrell-Lambert and published in 2018 in association with the London Wildlife Trust, it is all about where you can go to watch birds in the London area. 38 places to be exact; big venues like the London Wetland Centre and the RSPB reserve at Rainham Marshes, and plenty of reservoirs (out by Heathrow and along the Lea Valley), parks, woods and so on — some in Central London, others out in the suburbs (and a couple outside of what could be reasonably defined as London, such as Southend-on-Sea). Brent Reservoir is conspicuous by its absence, but I’m not going to quibble about what should and should not be included in a very useful book. 

Some of the places in the book I have been to before, like Crystal Palace Park and Richmond Park (both visited when I walked the Capital Ring a few years ago). There are a few old favourites of mine in there, like Hampstead Heath, Hyde Park, the East India Dock Basin and the aforementioned Rainham Marshes. There are places I’d like to visit (and I went to one such last year — Woodberry Wetlands, a new nature reserve that’s a ten-minute walk from Manor Park Tube station; it too is on the Capital Ring but has been redeveloped as a nature reserve since I did that, and very nice it is too). And there are a couple that are very local, even more so than the Heath.

One of those is Coldfall Wood, a small area of ancient woodland on the border between East Finchley and Muswell Hill (actually a hundred yards or so into the latter, if the local authority signage is any guide). I used to go and birdwatch there every so often after Allison and I first moved to East Finchley, but what with one thing or another I’d not been there for several years until I noticed that it was in this book. I therefore decided to return and see what I could see. After all, it’s in walking distance from my house, so why not?

By ‘ancient woodland’, I mean in this case a remnant of the old Forest of Middlesex that used to cover much of what is now suburban North London (a clue that the area used to be woodland can even be seen in place names like, well, Finchley, which means a lea (clearing in the woods) where finches were known to gather); other remnants also exist, like Highgate Wood and Queen’s Wood — both of which are also included in Birdwatching London. 

Coldfall Wood, which has been designated as a local nature reserve since 2013, is 35 acres (14 hectares) in size and is bordered by residential streets, allotments, a municipal cemetery and the Muswell Hill Playing Fields. I entered the wood via one of the streets, Creighton Avenue. 

Although the sounds of the suburbs permeated the woodland — car alarms, the roar of traffic on the North Circular — stepping into Coldfall Wood does feel like going back in time to something more primal; the woodland here actually does date back thousands of years. Maybe I’m being overly imaginative, but I think there’s something about woodland that connects us to our ancient ancestors. Although they had wolves to contend with, where I had to deal with dogs and their walkers, potentially scaring the birds away!

Actually, one dog-walking couple did stop to chat, and told me that a walking group had seen a pair of Firecrests here recently. None of those for me (this time at least) — my sightings had begun with a Jay and continued with Carrion Crows (lots of those), Ring-necked Parakeets, a male Great Spotted Woodpecker, a Stock Dove and, unlike my recent visit to the Heath, plenty of small birds. 

A Wren entertained me with its singing (such a big voice for such a small bird!), a Nuthatch flew by with a beak full of food, an uncharacteristically lone Long-tailed Tit perched on a nearby twig, not far from one of its Blue cousins. A small flock of finches flew away at the sound of a nearby dog; I was just about able to identify them as female Chaffinches before they disappeared from view. A small brown bird identified itself as a Chiffchaff with its distinctive song. Add to that two Robins, a Dunnock and a Great Tit. There were also a few Blackbirds and four Redwings; can’t be long before the latter return to Scandinavia for the summer. 

An hour well spent! I should come here more often. 

Ten Birds that Changed the World

Stephen Moss is one of my favourite birding writers, and his latest doesn’t disappoint. 

Published in 2023, Ten Birds That Changed the World is an ornithological take on that sub-genre of non-fiction that looks to explore history through certain items or events; other examples of this sort of book that I have enjoyed include The Anatomy of England (a history of the England football team, told through the prism of ten matches), A History of the World in 6 Glasses (or, six drinks that changed the world) and A History of the World in 100 Objects (a collaboration between the British Museum and Radio Four). Since I clearly like this sort of book, one about birds was always going to be right up my alley.

Stephen Moss is a favourite nature writer of mine; I’ve enjoyed books of his like This Birding Life and The Accidental Countryside — and the fact that he has a column in The Guardian is probably the only reason why that newspaper’s website appears on my browser history. 

Moss’s choice of birds was done in order for each choice to relate to a fundamental aspect of humanity (and how we humans have interacted with birds) — mythology (the Raven), communication (the Feral Pigeon), food and family (the Wild Turkey), extinction (the Dodo), evolution (Darwin’s finches — between fourteen and eighteen species, depending on how you count them), agriculture (the Guanay Cormorant), conservation (the Snowy Egret), politics (the Bald Eagle), hubris (the Tree Sparrow) and the climate emergency (the Emperor Penguin). 

He begins strongly with his chapter on Ravens, looking at their central role in mythology across their range (most of the Northern Hemisphere). Various cultures are explored, which allows Moss to show that he’s done his homework here. This is a well-researched and well-written book. Moss writes well on subjects like extinction and conservation (the story of the Snowy Egret, one of many species of bird killed for its feathers in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, is also the story of how conservation charities like the RSPB came to be founded), and I think even the most experienced of birders will learn something from this book. 

I learned a few new things. I, like the average reader, had thought that the various species of finch on the Galápagos Islands played a key role in the development of Darwin’s theory of evolution — but on reading this, I was disabused of this notion (although he noticed the finches when he went to the Galapagos, he never mentioned them in On the Origin of Species, and the ‘origin myth’ that the finches provided him with a ‘eureka moment’ with regards to evolution only came about after his death, although that hasn’t stopped natural historians up to and including the legendary David Attenborough from repeating the legend as fact). 

Although I was aware that the excrement of some birds was once a valuable fertiliser known as guano (thanks largely to this being touched on and referred to as such in Dr. No — the novel, not the film — which Moss mentions in passing), I had no idea that a Victorian businessman called William Gibbs (who made his dibs by selling the turds of foreign birds) became the richest commoner in England by importing vast quantities of the shit of the Guanay Cormorant (one of a very small handful of birds named after something it produces), which revolutionised agricultural practices. 

I also had no idea that Mao Tse-Tung (Zedong?) not only tried to eradicate Tree Sparrows in China in the late 1950s but actually managed to whip up enough fervour to get the people to do just that, bringing the bird to near-extinction in the People’s Republic — only to see that action lead directly to a major famine in which millions of people died, as he had not realised that they preyed on insects which, if left unchecked, would decimate the rice crop. The lesson here, other than the fact that Mao was a dangerous nutjob who didn’t think things through but was nevertheless able to maintain an iron grip on the mostly illiterate country he ruled, is that you mess with nature at your peril, which leads onto the final chapter, a hard-hitting polemic about the climate emergency (as he explains, Moss opts not to call it ‘climate change’ as it’s more serious than that). 

By using the Emperor Penguin as his subject in the last chapter, Moss is able to show how climate change is affecting the world by focussing on the polar extremes. It so happens that the Emperor Penguin is one of my favourite birds (not that I’ve ever seen one; zoos aside, the only penguins I have ever laid eyes on were the African Penguins at Simonstown Beach, near Cape Town), quite possibly because when I was a child I loved Penguin’s Progress by Jill Tomlinson but also because they breed during the Antarctic winter, which is amazing. Sadly, their prospects are grim thanks to climate change (not just loss of sea ice but also a decline in krill, their main food), with some scientists forecasting that the species could be close to extinction by the end of this century. 

A somber note on which to end, but what a fascinating book. Definitely worth reading. 

A walk on the Heath

Spring is here! It looked like it was going to be a lovely day today, so what better thing to do in North London than go for a walk on the Heath?

Over 800 acres of meadow and woodland, Hampstead Heath is one of London’s iconic green spaces. It’s one of my favourite places in London too — I enjoy the occasional swim in the Men’s Pond (I love wild swimming, but I’m not brave or crazy enough to do so regularly all year round), Kenwood House is a nice place to visit, there are some lovely pubs on the edges (my two favourites are the two Flasks, one in Hampstead and the other in Highgate; the ‘Flask to Flask’ walk in either direction is a good one) and I love walking there — even when the Heath gets busy (and it does), there’s always a quiet bench somewhere to get away from the numbers. Sometimes I even indulge in a bit of tree climbing, just because I can. 

The bird life there’s fantastic too. I’ve seen Kestrels there, woodpeckers of the Green and Great Spotted varieties as well as lots of water birds on the Heath’s many ponds. The information boards say that Sparrowhawks hunt there, which I can well believe although I’ve never seen one (not there, anyway) and I have heard Tawny Owls when I’ve been there at night (indeed, my main motivation for being there after dark was to try and spot owls in the grey pre-dawn; no such luck). One thing I never seem to see much of on the Heath is the smaller birds; there tend to be too many people (and dogs) to allow for those to be seen easily. 

It was a lovely spring day, weatherwise; no rain, cloudy with sunny intervals and enough of a breeze to make you know that summer’s not here yet. I took the Tube to Belsize Park and walked up Parliament Hill for the view over London, and then meandered north. 

I saw Carrion Crows (lots of those, the most seen at any one point was 39), Magipes, the inevitable Ring-necked Parakeets, Feral Pigeons and Woodpigeons. A few Jackdaws and a Jay. For the smaller ones, I heard several Robins before I actually saw one and then clocked a couple of  Great Tits on one of the feeders in the fenced-off area by the Bird Sanctuary Pond. 

On the nearby Model Boating Pond (when did anyone last sail model boats on it, I wonder) there was plenty of waterfowl — Mallards, Tufted Ducks (described by someone within my earshot as “the most duck-like ducks”, which I think is a wonderful quote that sums them up), a pair of Great Crested Grebes (not indulging in their elaborate mating ritual, alas), a pair of Mute Swans and (also) a pair of loud Egyptian Geese that were honking at anything that went near them. 

Over on the Men’s Pond, there were plenty of gulls — Herring, Black-headed and Lesser Black-backed, and a couple of Cormorants. 

I finished by wandering up to Kenwood House, browsing the second-hand bookshop there (a hardback copy of Birds Britannica was too tempting to resist, and I look forward to perusing it!) before walking up to Highgate to get the bus home. Twenty species seen in total. A good day’s walk on a good day for walking. 

The Carrion Crow (birds of East Finchley, part 4)

A regular one, this. My birding log for 2024 states that I saw this bird in my local neighbourhood every month in that year. It was the same in 2023, and if it’s not the same this year I will be very surprised indeed; heck, if I don’t manage to see at least one Carrion Crow (Corvus corone, also known as, well, a crow) every time I go out for a walk, the reason is probably because I’ve not been paying attention. Rather like the pigeons and the parakeets!

If you look up, chances are you’ll see one, either flying over or perched on a rooftop. The weathervane atop the spurs of the local church is a popular spot. 

Although widespread in Britain, they’re very territorial, often spending their whole lives in the same area. It’s generally considered a sociable bird, especially when compared to its close relative the Rook (when I was a kid I was told, I don’t recall by whom, that the way to tell them apart is simply that if it’s on its own, it’s a crow, but if there’s a lot of them, they’re rooks) but the Carrion Crow can be a sociable bird; in his book The Birds of London (a book which no self-respecting London birder should be without), Andrew Self notes that there are winter roosts in the London area where they number in the hundreds, or even the thousands in some cases. It’s also worth noting that young Carrion Crows have been known to hang around and help their parents to feed the chicks in the next brood. 

Like other members of the crow family, they’re intelligent birds as their capacity for complex social arrangements (as shown by the above fact and also that old fable about the crow and the pitcher — unable to get at the water in the pitcher, the crow fills it with stones until the water level rises enough to enable it to drink the water). 

They are very similar in nature to other crow species like the Hooded Crow (which used to be considered to be a sub-species of the Carrion Crow), the American Crow (which I’ve seen in Canada) and the Pied Crow (which I remember seeing a lot of on my African travels, two decades ago). Quite why the collective noun for them is a murder of crows is a mystery to me; as the name implies, they do eat carrion and they do sometimes steal eggs, but they eat just about anything and are by nature scavengers, which must go a long way towards explaining why they can happily co-exist alongside people. 

Birding in Spain

At the back end of February we went to Spain for a few days with some friends. We stayed in San Lorenzo de el Escorial, not far from Madrid, and I took every opportunity I could to have a wander around the lovely town and surrounding countryside to see what I could see. 

Most of the birds I encountered were ones I see at home — Great Tits, Magpies, Chaffinches, the ubiquitous Feral Pigeons and a fair few House Sparrows in the town itself. 

Buzzards and Red Kites were seen overhead; so far, so Cotswolds but there were some continental specialities to be found. In the town itself I encountered a Serin in a tree; a rarity in Britain but a resident species in Spain. Have I ever seen one before? I’m not sure. In the square by the monastery were lots of White Wagtails — very similar to our Pied Wagtails which are in fact a subspecies which predominates in Britain and Ireland!

For me, though, the highlight was a flock of… well, the were lovely-looking birds with black caps and light blue wings and tails, but what are they exactly?

My ever-reliable copy of the Collins Bird Guide (second edition), which I always take with me on trips to Europe, says that these beautiful and evidently highly sociable birds are Azure-Winged Magpies, which breed only on the Iberian Peninsular (ie. Spain and Portugal) and, err, in the Far East. Odd? Yes. However, recent research into bird genetics has shown that the ones in Spain and Portugal are in fact a different species that just happens to look exactly the same as the Oriental ones. So the ones I saw were in fact Iberian Magpies. A lifer for me — and definitely the ornithological highlight of my trip to Spain! 

The Starling (birds of East Finchley, part 3)

Continuing with my bird-by-bird look at the avian life of East Finchley (and yes, we will get to the finches at some point!), I’m looking at Starlings this time. Glossy black and speckled (more so in the autumn), and rather gregarious, the Common Starling (Sturnus vulgaris, also known as the European Starling in North America) always strikes me as being a winter bird even though it is in fact a resident here in Britain. 

It’s also on the RSPB’s red list according to my bird book (the RSPB Handbook of British Birds, 2021 edition) as the British Starling population has experienced a strong decline, although from what I can see (ie. Starlings most days when I go for a walk or look at the feeder in my front garden) they’re a regular sight. Unlike the smaller birds that visit, they’re not afraid of the parakeets!

Numbers have actually declined in much of Western Europe over the past few decades, due largely to changes in farming meaning that there are fewer invertebrates for them to feed on. Worldwide, though, they have been deemed to be of Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (this being what you see when you look up a bird species on Wikipedia). They were introduced into North America in the nineteenth century, notably in 1890 when a chap called Eugene Schliffen released sixty of them in New York’s Central Park, although the notion that he had a plan (sorry, couldn’t resist!) to introduce every bird species mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare into the US appears to be an urban myth. 

Back here in Britain, the Starling is a resident bird s as though numbers do indeed swell in the winter as we get an influx of visitors from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. 

Starlings are the great mimics of the bird world. Their song (and it’s mostly the males who do the singing) can be melodical and it can be mechanical, and they can imitate other birds as well as man-made sounds like car alarms. A general rule of thumb that I have with birdsong is that if I can’t figure out what it is, it’s safe to assume that it may be a Starling.

Perhaps that’s why I hear a lot of Starlings!

I cannot mention Starlings without mentioning murmurations — those close-formation swarms of large numbers of flying Starlings, synchronised yet random in terms of direction. It’s a sight to behold but I have only ever seen it once, at dusk on the seafront at Aberystwyth (where, incidentally, there’s a pub called the Starling Cloud, although that’s quite a way inland; best pub in Aber is the Glengower which is right on the esplanade). It was quite the sight! How, I wonder, are they able to do that?