Nice to get out and about in autumn. Bit of a magical mystery tour for us workers yesterday, which involved my being dropped off at Fowlsheugh to do some maintenance work to prepare for winter.
Yup, like in that famous TV series, WINTER IS COMING. So I wrapped up tight and prepared to face the direwolves. I mean elements.
I had heard that Fowlsheugh is a pretty impressive piece of coastline. But I hail from North Devon, which is basically one long cliff with a few towns tacked on the side, so it was going to take something special to impress me. The place was, in a word, idyllic. And winter nowhere in sight. It was one of those days that should have turned up some time in August, and I found myself shedding the layers, working outside, with no one else around but a few meadow pipits and a slightly lost looking fieldfare.
It was my first trip to the reserve, and slightly selfishly I was rather pleased to have the place to myself. It’s a bit odd going to a seabird colony when there aren’t any nesting seabirds around. Like going to a theatre when there isn’t a play on. Fowlsheugh is more than just a seabird colony though, and is worth a trip any time of year. There was a smattering of feral pigeons pretending to be rock doves, but the main birdy fun was to be had out at sea, with a few common scoter and good numbers of auks bobbing around on the sea. Most exciting of the auks, and a little bit surprising, was a small raft of eight puffins. They were close enough in to see their distinctive wintry bills through a very powerful telescope. Par for the course at this time of year, and it’s always a good day when there are puffins about.
It was so idyllic in fact, and I was working "so hard”, that I forgot to take any pictures. Oops.
The mystery tour stopped in at a few places around the coast, but our final stop was a quick one at Aberdeen cemetery (the one by the Dee) to check for waxwings (which are just another sign that WINTER IS COMING). I know there’s a lot of waxwing love going on at the minute, with flocks of up to 400 roaming around the country, but we’ve been a bit out of luck with them up here at Strathbeg. And it’s definitely not for want of trying. So you can forgive me for feeling a bit pessimistic about our chances of actually catching up with what I’ve been calling 'the fuzzy pink balls of disappointment'.
Half an hour in and the light was beginning to go and I was beginning to tire of the redwings. And then we just sort of stumbled into them. Easy as that. Vicky says it was skill but I don’t believe her. Here’s a picture I took of one of them to make up for the lack of nice cliff-edge landscape photos.