King Eider at Tollie.
I thought that would get your attention, sadly the bird failed to turn up, might have something to do with the distance we are a way from the sea, however I did meet the man who took this amazing photo of the King Eider in Burghead harbour. Thanks goes to Allan Adams for allowing us to use his photo. A visit to Burghead is a must if you wish to go and try to better this photo, I believe the King Eider has also been spotted from our reserve at Culbin Sands in past years.
Photography is proving to be a popular occupation up at Tollie and given my background, RAF photographer for those who have not been bored to death by my many tales, one I am keen to promote. We have already trialled a photographic hide at the site. Whilst it proved that better images of the birds would be possible, it did put the birds off from visiting the table. I will over time look for a better solution and eventually a more permanent arrangement. The fact that three of the birds regularly feeding are untagged birds is also popular with the photographers. I know that it is good to get photos of untagged birds, it is always good to get details of any bird tags you see, even away from Tollie so if you see any and are able to get a positive ID please let us know, photos of any quality depicting tags would be good, post them on the photos page. Here are some details on wing tags and if you look at the photos page you will see an example of a bird with tags.
Wing Tag Details
In order to facilitate various monitoring and research programmes, wing tagging is now carried out, at some level or other, on all reintroduced populations of red kites.In 1998 a national coding scheme was introduced which allows red kites to be identified at various levels depending on how well the birds are seen.The colour of the tag on the birds left wing denotes the area in which they were marked/released and the colour of the birds right wing tag denotes the year in which it fledged.In addition, each tag bears a tag code, which may be a letter, number or symbol. The colours of the tag and its code together allow a bird to be individually identified.These sightings are extremely valuable in being able to piece together information on the the day to day life of kites in the wild.
First record whether it is the bird’s left or right wing that you can see and make a note of the base colour of the tag e.g. Left Blue. Almost all the birds will have a blue left tag as this is the identifying colour for North Scotland, right wing colour changes each year and identifies the year the bird was marked.
Now record any number, letter or mark you can see on the tag and describe the colour. On blue and other dark coloured tags, letters and numbers are invariably white. Whilst light coloured tags have black letters and numbers. Symbols such as $, %, £, #, ? and & have been used, less frequently but follow the same rule. There are other markings to look out for such as single spots, double spots, diagonal bars, horizontal bar or bars, inverted triangles, etc., these can be of a variety of contrasting colours.
Finally, there should be a terminal colour bar at the bottom end of the tag, which normally indicates the colour of the tag on the other wing. It is equally important that this bar is looked for and its presence or absence (as in 2010 in North Scotland, when both tags were the same colour) recorded. Do not forget to describe the colour.
Record your sightings in sightings book or pass details to a RSPB staff member.
Bird numbers are continuing to increase, so the feeding spectacle gets better. We now have a sizable number of corvids coming to the table to add to the Red Kite, Buzzard mix, so the Kites are really busy defending their dinner. Last week I saw both a male and a female Hen Harrier in the Tollie area so I can confirm the rumours that there was one in the area, we just need to confirm the Merlin sighting now.
This will be my last blog of the year so I will close it by wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and should you go to Tollie over the Christmas period please take care on the track if there has been any snow or freezing weather.