Natural Selection

I was successful in a competition run by the North East Scotland Bird Club last week, and the prizes arrived today. As well as a couple of North East Scotland Bird Reports there is a splendid calendar by Ron Macdonald and a couple of his greeting cards with images of Blackcap and Golden Plovers.

I’ve had a quick look at the bird reports, and it’s a high quality publication. I like the fact that the back covers are full page shots of other wildlife covered, particularly this picture by Ian Hastie of Bottlenose Dolphins in Aberdeen Harbour on the rear of the 2020 report.

It’s striking that there is a report team member assigned to write up the Crane account, when they are a rare bird in this part of the world. I was told recently though that the one or two a year that pass through Lancashire are known to be the birds covered in this report, that nest in the Loch of Strathbeg area of Aberdeenshire.

I’ve never seen an adult Crane in Lancashire, the only one I have seen was a frankly rather grotty looking first summer that spent a few days at Pilling a few years ago. That bird was on the cover of a Fylde Report and it’s up there with my least favoured report cover choices over the years.

Adults though are stunning birds. During the first lockdown two were seen heading in the broad direction of my house. It was a glorious sunny day and I stood in the back garden scanning the skies to the east. They were seen by people at Poulton, I’m near enough to the town to live on Poulton Old Road but they eluded me. There routes north are unpredictable as they don’t hug the coast, but I would dearly love to catch up with one in the next couple of months.