Morvern Wildlife Diary. Week ending 10th August. 2008
Since the end of July we’ve had a mixed bag of weather, some prolonged periods of heavy rain, some muggy Summer days, and more recently it has been fresher, cooler with an Autumn feel in the air.
I’ve twice walked my butterfly transect so far this month, which takes me through and along a lovely south facing oak wood on the side of a hill. The first time it was hot and humid, with pestering flies and midges and horse flies. The second walk was much more of a joy, with a nice cool northwest breeze, and no flies or midges. And that’s where we are right now, coming to the end of Summer, and at the beginnings of Autumn.
Butterflies – just three species were recorded on the transect, a few speckled wood, the last few dark-green fritillaries, and of course the most abundant butterfly of late Summer and of the whole butterfly year, scotch argus, that fly up from your feet in threes and fours or more at almost every step you take through the long waving, rippling in the wind purple moor grass. I still have not seen a single peacock, or small tortoiseshell since the Spring. Neither have I seen any migrant butterflies yet, red admirals or painted ladies. Did see graylings on
and around the rocky top of a hill. Normally a coastal butterfly, but here we have them up on the hills, which aren’t far from the sea here in Morvern.
Woodland birds, again at this time of the year it all seems very deserted, then you’ll come across one of those big bands of mixed species, calling to keep in touch, up in the roof of the wood. Impossible to count and even see them sometimes, but if you listen you can pick out the different kinds, great, blue, coal and long-tailed tits, chaffinch, treecreeper, willow warbler. Also saw juvenile spotted flycatcher, though not with all those other birds, and great spotted woodpecker. A young wren, independent and on it’s own in the big wide world, came close, peeping at me from among the bracken fronds, inquisitive. And in another part of the wood, a wren family, the parents still feeding four fledglings in a row on a branch. The young ones wings and tails still stubby and not yet fully developed. When they went to follow their foraging mother they looked more like big brown bees as they whirred away.
Up on the hills I didn’t see a great deal, meadow pipits, a few fresh juvenile and worn out and tatty adult wheatears. A family of mistle thrush, a glimpse of a golden eagle rounding a hill, and a big sub-adult sea eagle flew across the open spaces, looking huge. On another day, at the end of one of my butterfly walks, I heard an eagle calling, and found just beyond a low hill two eagles, a golden and a sea eagle. They were of a similar size, so I judged them to be a female golden eagle and a male sea eagle. I wasn’t sure which had been calling, but I think it was the golden eagle. They were interacting, flying close together, the sea eagle, above the golden eagle, occasionally turned and dropped down towards the goldie, and she twisted upside down and presented her talons to ward him off. But there was no real aggression between the two. They circled up into the blue, drifted apart and went their separate ways, the sea eagle away in a high glide towards the coast, the goldie back into her hills.
The red deer hinds look sleek and fine in their summer red dress. The calves are growing. Also saw, moving into the hinds summer grazing areas, a herd of eighteen fine looking stags, showing off their re-grown and still in velvet antlers. They look so much better now, than at the end of a hard winter. Funny that they spend the summer together and get along, pretty much, apart from the occasional sparring match. But in just a few weeks it will be a different story, fighting in earnest with hardened antlers over harems of hinds.
I’ve not spent much time along the coast recently. I did see two parent ringed plover with one well grown youngster. There have been a few curlew about, and I’ve seen the occasional gannet in the sound, along with cormorants and shags and small groups of guillimots with flightless young, and porpoises one calm day. I had a report of a single otter swimming out of a sea loch. The most interesting recent report was of a basking shark close inshore in the sound. I’ve heard that they used to be in the sound in good numbers many years ago, but they are a rare sight nowadays in between Morvern and Mull.
Other sightings of interest… I’ve had good views of a barn owl. Once it was out earlier than usual, and was set about by an angry gang of swallows, and dive bombed by a male sparrowhawk. Wisely, the owl beat a graceful, buoyant retreat back into its barn, and stayed there until it was a bit darker. Sparrowhawks have been through the garden almost daily, but I rarely see them, maybe the occasional glimpse as it tears through the shrubs and trees. I know when they are about, because all the little garden birds disappear in a flurry of fleeing wings, then shout out the alarm from under cover. Then follows a worried silence, all is quiet, there are no birds in sight, they’re all hiding…has it gone, is it still there, waiting. Eventually either the hiding hawk flies off, or the sparrows and chaffinches brave it and come back out again. I’m not sure if the sparrowhawks are adults or young birds, as I’ve not had a decent look at one. Young sparrowhawks reach independence this month, but I think the birds that are about at the moment are hunting adults, still tending their offspring.
Our eighty or so greylag geese are back in the fields, along with a dozen canada geese. These aren’t wintering geese from the far north, from Iceland or Greenland say, those birds fly straight over in skeins in the Autumn, but where they are from I don’t know. They come here for the winter, but I don’t know where they go for the Summer. They’re just local geese I guess. It’s always nice to have them around, seeing and hearing them close to the village. This afternoon they went up and looked fine in late afternoon sunshine, they flew towards me, calling, one of them was lagging behind…wait a minute, that’s not a goose, that’s a sea eagle, and it had put them up. The eagle made no effort to have a go at the geese, they circled and landed again, and the sea eagle carried on its way along the coast on those immense wings. Oh, and a nice family of linnets, they have such lovely songs and calls.
Until next time…
