Small Bird News

I cannot find it in me to be charitable towards the local crow population which spends much of its time trying to get at the small birds' food, often with some success - which infuriates me as I spend hours inventing more and more complicated ways of excluding them. Occasionally, however, they do provide us with some entertainment, like the other evening when dozens of them gathered in one corner of the graveyard opposite the house to shout down at something obscured by the wall. They spent some minutes at this, then flew away, but kept coming back in smaller groups to shout some more. I went across to discover the object of their fury, to find nothing there. Group hysteria, I presume.

The gulls and starlings, but not the crows, use the small birds' bath for their ablutions. I haven't the heart to chase them off but my dislike of the gulls increases - a pair are now adding insult to injury by nesting on our chimney pot, from where they can nip down to pinch the small birds' food. Lying awake in bed at three in the morning listening to the two of them canoodling just above one's head is no fun.

On a much more cheerful note, we found this very smart male wheatear posing in a small grove of spruce on the moorland at the back of Beinn Bhraggie. Wheatear are unusual amongst birds in that the female, in her summer clothes, is more colourful than the male.

For some of our feathered regulars, rearing the family is surprisingly advanced. Both the chaffinches and the sparrows are bringing young into the feeding area, although the young, despite the masses of food lying around, refuse to feed themselves.

We were thrilled to see house martins starting to build a nest under the eaves at the north end of the house. At one point seven birds were involved. Whether this was a pair with some of last year's young helping, or whether we're going to end up with several nests, or whether they'll all change their minds and decide to nest elsewhere, remains to be seen.

At Golspie Tower we finally saw a yellowhammer, a male camouflaging himself amongst the gorse while he sang. We hosted heaps of yellowhammers at our feeders in Kilchoan, which seemed a totally inappropriate place for a bird of open fields. This pair are in the right place, surrounded by big fields and plenty of gorse to hide in.

Another new bird for us here is the linnet. Pairs have been feeding in the playing fields round the house but have yet to come close enough for a good photo. The male linnet always looks as if he's just come back from a rather bloody fight.

This newcomer is particularly welcome as one of the birds for which I have a very soft spot. It's a siskin, a female, and she brought her very smart mate along shorty afterwards to show him the feast that was on offer but, sadly, we haven't seen them since.