Snowy Mountains

I was snow-boarding up in the Snowy mountains last week, and it was snowy. There was a steady south-east wind bringing in cold moist air all week. This created constant light snowfall and freezing fog. The best riding was through the woods on deep consolidated snow, picking your own slalom route through the trees.

 The leaves on the snow gums were coated with thick ice as the fog froze around them.

 The granite tors were coated in ice too.

The whole landscape was deep in winter's grip. Wonderful stuff.

Ringing a Golden Eagle Chick

Yesterday I was up in one the more remote glens in the Scottish Highlands ringing a Golden Eagle chick. The eyrie is set in a high corrie, on a cliff overlooking the wide glen below.

There was only one chick in the nest, about six and a half weeks old. It would have hatched in mid-May when the weather was rather wet and windy, which could explain why there was only one chick when eagles in that area can easily rear two chicks per year. Eagles here usually lay two eggs and as there was no sign of a failed egg, it could be assumed that one chick had died earlier - perhaps due to the adults not being able to provide enough food for two.

Ewan Weston clambered over to the nest and ringed the chick as well as collected DNA samples for parental identity and other relatedness with other samples from birds collected over recent years. The nest is typically large for a golden eagle and easily big enough to hold our weight and size as well as that of the chick.

 Prey items in and around the eyrie included mountain leveret, red grouse chick, meadow pipit juvenile and a water vole - a species considered rare in the UK now, although they are common in some Highland glens such as where this one would have been caught.



Barn Owls

Summer is well on in Scotland with most birds feeding large young and many are fledged. One species which is often a little later to breed is the Barn Owl and today I went with my brother Rab to a barn owl friendly farmer, Chris's barn. The nest is is a box placed for the owls on top of a stack of round hay bales and there were three chicks and a dud egg in the box. The chicks were a perfect age for ringing.

Barn owls have long pointed faces, not round faces like other owls such as Tawny or Great Grey. The chicks are very docile, almost falling over in a sort of drowsiness trance while being handled. And they have black eyes, none of those piercing yellow or orange irises like Short-Eared or Long-Eared Owls.

Last Day

 Redpoll on nest in willow shrub

Today was the last day of our trip to north Norway. We rounded it off with catching and ringing another Broad-Billed Sandpiper and a brood of Wood Sandpiper chicks.

But I thought I should mention the passerines which nest here in the arctic. Here are a couple of shots of a Redpoll on her nest set in a low willow bush. The nest is a fine mesh of willow down and grasses, lined with a thick wad of Willow Grouse feathers - the white ones moulted by the grouse as they turn from white to brown plumage in spring. A wonderfully warm nest for these high latitudes.

  Redpoll nest and eggs

And as a last parting shot here is a fledgling Hawk Owl, one of a brood of four which we came across today.





Ringing Broad-Billed Sandpipers

Today we were ringing Broad-Billed Sandpipers. This whole trip to north Norway has been focused on the study of these birds and other arctic-breeding waders, especially Jack Snipe. And the study has been ongoing for several years, led by my brother Rab, Skitts to the birders who know him, and Karl-Birger Strann of the Norsk institutt for naturforskning in Tromso. I have been a mere helper on this trip and am grateful to them both for a great experience, and to Ed Duthie and Harry Scott who have helped on this project before and have been a great lead on the birds of the area. All have made this an excellent excursion.

 Adult Broad-Billed Sandpiper marked with a unique

combination of colour rings for ready identification

     in the field wherever it is seen on the breeding area

 or in its wintering grounds.

 The chicks are incrediibly well camouflaged, their

white speckled down mimicing the water glistening

on the waterlogged vegetation where they live in the arctic mires.

And they are tiny, all four sit easily within the palm of a hand.