birding

On our very first day in Edinburgh, we wandered about the Royal Botanic Garden in a jet-lagged daze. An accipiter profile high overhead was one of the day’s first birds. Sparrowhawk presumably. A Kestrel made an appearance, but more on these anon. And a Buzzard (Buteo buteo) was seen twice, the second time being mobbed…

The British Isles are rich with members of the Corvidae. The Jackdaw (Corvus monedula), for one, was a species ever-present on our trip, particularly in towns and villages. One of many dialect names for them is Sea-crow and we rarely strayed far from the coast. They are very fond of using chimneys for their nests…

Razorbills (Alca torda).“Razorbill” has in the past also been used as a name for Puffins and Murres/Guillemots. All of these birds are auks, of the family Alcidae. “Auk” comes from the Old Norse alka. The largest auk was the nearly 3-foot tall Pinguinus impennis, the now extinct Great Auk. Note that binomial: the penguins, Southern…

Twelve thousand breeding pairs of Common Murres, Uria aalge, known as Guillemots in the UK, nest on Staple Island. Murres eschew nesting material and just use shallow depressions on the rocky surface of such “bird cliffs.” Their eggs are rather more pointy on one end than your typical egg, so that, if nudged or knocked,…

The Farnes are a series of outcroppings of igneous dolerite known locally as the Whinstone Sill starting a mile and and half off of the town of Seahouses, Northumberland. There are 15-20 of them, the ambiguity depending on the tide. Uninhabited except for bird wardens working for the National Trust, the larger rocks in the…

You never forget your first Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica). Mine was, alas, quite dead, a veritable ex-Puffin, gone to join the Choir Invisible. It was being inquisitively pecked at by a Herring Gull on Nantucket’s South Shore. The scavenger was put out and aloft by my approach, and the small dead auk of the family…