Sitting with Ptarmigan

I have been surveying ptarmigan in the Cairngorms over the past week. Now is a good time to count them as the pairs are all formed, set in their territories, and the females are laying up. This is when they are most conspicuous, well they are never conspicuous, but less likely to not be seen. The males, above, sit on prominent rocks and the females spend much of the day feeding. I found this confiding pair, so I sat about 10 m from them as they went about their business.

They have now moulted out of their white winter plumage, the females are mottled brown and grey, and the males are mostly grey. Although there was fresh snow every day last week, they spent their time feeding on snow-free clumps of herbage and rested amongst rocks. So their colouring didn't expose them to predators. Nor to me except after watching for movement for a long time - about half an hour. They had probably been watching me and decided that I was no threat before they began moving, it was only then that I saw them.

The males spend most of their time watching over their hens as they feed. Watching for predators and chasing away rival males. There were males about a hundred metres either side of this pair, one had one hen and the other had two.

The only food plants not covered by snow were up on wind-swept ridges and the most abundant food in such places is crowberry, Empetrum nigrum. The hen picked the developing leaf and flower buds from the very tips of the shoots.

It's not only food that the hens need to make eggs. They also need water as they might lay 7-10 eggs, which is a lot of water volume, and the most readily available supply was the snow lying all around. So this hen was eating snow.

After about twenty minutes, the hen stopped eating and clambered up into some rocks to rest. Always closely followed by the male. She was heavy at the rear, a sign that she had eggs forming inside her.

The pair settled down to rest, the hen to digest her meal, and the cock to sit alert on top of a nearby rock. His pie-bald spring plumage perfectly matching the rock and snow landscape.

Carn Ban Mor 
(Big white stony hilltop)

Time for a post on a wildplace.

My first week in Scotland 2019 has been a wild one with the wind constantly blowing from the north and bringing lots of snow to the mountains. Much of the wildlife was lying low, so I went for a walk up onto the hills, just for a look around. My route went into Glen Feshie, then up the hill track to Carn Ban Mor. The path goes up from Achlean and follows the ridge above the Allt Fhearnagan. The cascades, above and below, are where the burn runs through a stand of old pine woodland at Badan Mosach.

The view from half-way up the falls. All was quiet as snow was falling. There was only the sound of the water and soft phat of snowflakes melting onto the branches.

Near the summit ridge at c 1000m with the snowline lying about 700m.

When I reached the summit ridge, this was the view: the broad plateau of Braeriach and Einich Cairn completely covered with fresh snow, which would have been lying on top of extensive old snowbeds from the winter.

The summit cairn of Carn Ban Mor was the only feature on the ridge. All else was under the snow.

One long white silky landscape.

There were high clouds above, but the snow-filled clouds were mostly below or blowing across the ridge, obliterating the view now and then. That was when it all felt very very wild. Lovely.

I had a look for ptarmigan in the rocky flanks of the ridge, but didn't see any birds or signs of them. So I simply sat in the snow for a while and grabbed glimpses of the glen when the cloud broke, stalling the moment when I knew I had to go back down.

It's good to go wild now and then, and I'm so glad I did. Another wonderful day in the hills.

First spring post for 2019

The tree and flower buds are opening in north-east Scotland now, like these Sycamore Acer pseudoplatanus leaf buds.

The lovely soft Scottish light shows the subtle tones and colours of the buds.

Down at ground level the Bluebells Hyacinthoides non-scripta are opening and the ferns unfurling.

It's good to take a ground-level view, that of the birds like the Robins Erithacus rubecula who were collecting insects to feed their newly-hatched young.

One pair of Robins in this wood had hidden their nest beneath this tussock of old dried grass from last year.

Their eggs hadn't hatched yet, the neighbouring pairs to either side had though. The chicks were only two days old.

The birds with young had five chicks, this nest contained six eggs. Five is the most common clutch size in north-east Scotland. perhaps there had been plenty insects for food when the eggs were laid two weeks ago. It was warm and sunny then, today was cold with showers.

Last autumn post for 2019

I was clambering up Mt Majura in north Canberra the other day and came eye to eye with these seed pods lying on top of a ridge.

The autumn gold of the seeds inside a Kurrajong seed pod. Old dry and blackened pods lie around.

The ground in the grove was littered with seed pods, some old some new.

The stand of Kurrajong trees were up on a ridge. Their straight stems and lush green foliage make them instantly recognisable. The ground cover of grasses and herbs was close-cropped by Eastern Grey Kangaroos.

There was a good crop of seed pods on most of the trees, but I don't know what animals eat them. Any suggestions?

The glistening green pods under a bright blue sky, what a lovely tree.

One last last crisp autumn view over Canberra.

And one final butterfly for the season in Canberra, an Amethyst Hairstreak Jalmenus icilius basking on a track on a hillside today. Other species seen flying today were Meadow Argus and Cabbage White.

It's Spring for me next week.

Autumn - eagle display

Autumn in Canberra is just getting brighter and better every day at the moment. Crisp clear light with far away views, like this one from Black Mountain across the city and lake to the distant hills.

And the Wedge-tailed Eagles are making the best of the weather for their autumn displays. Like this male over Mount Ainslie on the edge of the city.

He was with his partner, but no youngster from last year as this pair never bred. Although I have seen other pairs still with their last year's offspring, it won't be long til they move on and find their own way in life. For all this recent display activity is part of the eagles' bonding and territorial claim for the upcoming breeding season - they will lay eggs in July here in Canberra.

This pair were soaring over a wooded ridge, but there wasn't much wind so the display was a bit casual. The female was circling quite low while the male rose up, then as he stalled to a stop he would tilt over into a dive.

He tucked his wings in and charged on down, always in perfect control even when so tightly folded.

When he saw fit, he simply and easily turned up out of the dive and opened his wings to catch the wind, then he climbed back up to a high point and repeated several times. As it was quite a still day, the pair eventually dropped to perch in a tree. The best displays are done in breezy conditions.

Pasture Day Moth

Spot the moth - yes it is well-spotted

It's autumn, and there have been some cold nights in Canberra, but there are still some butterflies flying and a few daylight-flying moths. Like the one in the picture above, the well named Pasture Day Moth Apina callisto. Except the ones I saw the other day were not in pasture, they were all spread along the verge of a track through a low scrubby hillside.

The moths were lifting from nowhere as I walked along the track. I just never saw them until they moved. They were so well concealed by their cryptic colouring, so like the gravel they were resting on. The spots on their wings, when folded, matched the whites, yellows and reds of the tiny stones in colours and size. With the black lines hinting at shadow lines like those between the stones.

I stopped to take a proper look at them, but had to wait till they landed before I could grab any photographs. When flying, they flashed large cream patches on their wings. Then when they landed I had to creep up on them and use a 400 m lens to take decent shots, even from only two metres away. They are only about 3 cm long.

They all landed on gravel after a short flight. Although they are named pasture moths, they never landed on the grasses or herbs on the path edge. They all landed on a clear gravel patch. The pasture is where they lay their eggs, and their larvae hatch and feed.

Their strategy was working, for I watched some Pied Currawongs hawking butterflies, Meadow Argus, catching them as they flew low along the track or snatching them as they landed.

How many moths can you see in this habitat shot, I can't see any although I know there at least five on the edge of the track. They lift when disturbed, but only at the last moment.

Autumn is when many of the larger moths in the Canberra area emerge. Their large bodies, filled with fats, make excellent food for Tawny Frogmouths, which are hunting hard at this time, to put on weight to see them through the cold winter months.

Thanks to Suzi Bond who identified the moths for me.

Autumn Life

One of the surest signs of autumn is the wonderful smell of petrichore - one of my favourite smells, and favourite words - and a flush of mushrooms. I saw some yesterday. Lovely and fresh, but I'm just not that confident in identifying the Australian varieties so left them to be consumed by the animals.

And then I saw this lovely animal nearby, wonder if they would eat mushrooms? It's a wombat outside its burrow.

It was still early morning and quite cool, so I think this wombat was lying sunning itself at the burrow entrance. A sign of autumn-winter? I don't think they need do that in summer here in Canberra.

It certainly wasn't perturbed by my presence, so I took a few shots including close-ups of its face. Something I don't usually see, they tend to scurry off when approached and only show their hind end.

Meanwhile, up in the tree in the background of the first photo, there was another sign of autumn. The local Tawny Frogmouth had settled into his autumn-winter roost. He was sitting basking in the sunshine to warm himself up, strategically positioned on the sunny side of the tree, as they always do in autumn. The only tell-tale sign that he was there was a pile of white droppings on the ground below.

Look how well the plumage on his back and upper parts mimics the mottled dark grey of the topside of the peeling wood to his left, and how his breast feathers mimic the stripes of the grain on the lower side of the peeled wood.

Marvelous.

New Eagle Book

Following on from the last post, I give you news of the publication of the book on golden eagles that Adam Watson and I wrote and finalised at the end of last year. Unfortunately Adam never saw the final product which was being printed when he died. Below is a brief note on the book's page in the Hancock House Publishers website.

OBSERVATIONS OF GOLDEN EAGLES IN SCOTLAND: A HISTORICAL AND ECOLOGICAL REVIEW

                                      Softcover - $34.95 USD                                      Hardcover - $49.95 USD                                    

Condition

SOFTCOVER

HARDCOVER

Regular price$34.95

Newly Released!

Hancock House is saddened by the loss of one of Scotland's greatest conservationists- Dr. Adam Watson, but proud to have helped produced his last published work. We have provided some obituaries highlighting some of his lifetime achievements below.

Follow this link to Hancock House publishers to see the obituaries and further information on the book.

The book draws upon data collected on golden eagles by Adam since 1943, myself since the 1970s and Derek Spencer in recent years. There is a long history of studying golden eagles in Scotland since the pioneering work of Seton Gordon in the late 1800s. And in this book we brought together long-held unpublished information on golden eagles in north-east and north-west Scotland. The aim was to collate our combined knowledge of golden eagles, share that knowledge with others, and interpret our findings with a broad comprehension of how golden eagles have fared, are faring and will probably fare in the future in Scotland.

Some of the contents are descriptive, some scientific, all we hope will enlighten.

This book is in a way an archive of information on golden eagles as we pulled lots of data and historical details from our notebooks. It would have been difficult to have much of the contents accepted by modern scientific journals or even popular magazines. For many of the former have become heavy reading and much of the latter have become very light reading. Much of our text lies in between. 

We added about a hundred photographs to illustrate the history of eagle study in Scotland and current work being done. And we thank all those helpers and people who contributed data and photographs to the book.

We both found the foreword, of which the last sentences are copied below, very encouraging if a bit awkward to our Scottish demureness. Me, I am grateful to Adam for the shared trials, discussions and joys while putting the book together.


Foreword:

`............This book deserves rich accolades for the massive, persistent effort of the authors and their colleagues. In the annals of single species studies of raptors there is no comparable project, and no comparable volume, to what Adam Watson and Stuart Rae present here.'

David H. Ellis and Des B.A. Thompson.


P.S. The hardcover edition is nicer.