I’ve been
quite neglectful of the blog recently and thought I ought to get something
written. In part my neglect has been
down to the fact I’m involved in leading a series of presentations at the
Rising Sun Country Park which are aimed at people new to bird watching
including some of the wardens who had shown interest. The images that I’m using are in the main
provided by Samuel Hood, so it is a joint effort and in fact Sam is leading the
next with what promises to be a very interesting presentation. If it is all a success, and folk seem to be
enjoying it up to now, the whole thing may be repeated, and I understand we
have a few names listed of interested parties who were unable to get a place
this time around. Another reason for my
absence from the blog is simply lack of birding recently.
I’ve for
some time now been thinking of putting a talk together concerning feathers, a
very interesting and fascinating subject in my view, but I’ve yet to get around
to doing this. I did in my opening
presentation last week include some information on feathers and it is one of
the links I keep going throughout the talks.
I was able to include some information on the avian relationship to
dinosaurs, another fascinating subject in its self. I had a selection of feathers at hand of
course, and two had special stories behind them.
The first
tale/feather involved a trip taken many years ago to the Cairngorm area of
Scotland. This was and, although I
haven’t been up there for some time, remains a favourite area of mine, not least because of some of
the speciality birds of the area. The
real pleasure the trips provided was often getting out before sunrise with the
son of a friend of mine, Lee who I still occasionally bird with. We’d begin about 5.00am and often not see another
person until afternoon. On one of these
early mornings we were determined to find ourselves a Capercaillie by walking
the tracks of Abernethy Forest. We did
find a female Capercaillie and did have a short sighting as it flew into the
forest. We never did find a male and it
was some years after that I saw my first wild Capercaillie males at the viewing
site at Loch Garten. The search was
never the less always exciting and did bring other rewards. We passed by a very large black feather, and
yes, I should have known its significance!
The following day we decided to leave early in the morning once again,
but this time we visited one of my favourite walking areas around Loch an
Eilein (Loch of the Island) in Rothiemurchus Forest. We almost always found Crested Tits and
Crossbills in this area and on at least one occasion watched an Osprey fish
here. The island was one of the last
refuges of Osprey prior to extinction in Scotland and they haven’t returned to
this nest site. The nest was a target for
egg collectors and there are several stories about this. We looked in at the small building which at
the time held a few natural curiosities and found a feather exactly the same as
the one we had seen the previous day. It
was a Capercaillie feather, and no I certainly don’t have that one!
It was
raining the next morning and we had planned a later start anyway, but instead
of getting a few hours extra sleep we got going again about 5.00am and set off
to find the feather we had passed by.
For some reason the walk seemed much longer, and I began to think we
were going to be out of luck, but we did find it and it found a new home with
Lee. Lee has since passed it on to
Sam. I’m happy to say I’ve since had
close encounters with male Capercaillies and occasionally with the feather.
The second
tale/feather relates to a more recent find, this time the adventure was in
Finland. Sam and I had starts as early
as 4.00am o this trip but I don’t recall this particular morning being such an
early start, but it did involve a rather difficult walk through forest to a
Great Grey Owl nest. Finding the Great
Grey Owl on the nest is one of my best ever wildlife experiences. We were lucky enough to have as our leaders
Killian Mullarney and Dick Forsman. Dick
had become aware of Sam’s keenness so was always at pains to point things out
and give an explanation, so it was good that he was at hand when Sam came
across this particular feather. It was
found not far from the Great Grey Owls nest and turned out to be from a
Goshawk. Dick explained the pattern on
the feather showed that it was from the Russian stock and quite different from
what would be found on a British or Western European bird. Another participant claimed that she had seen
the feather first, but as she had shown no inclination to pick it up, if she
thought Sam was going to pass it over to her she soon found out that that was
not to be! The feather remains a prize
possession of Sam’s.
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