The Urban Birder
There can be few cities where the auld adage ‘just look up’ is more applicable than Edinburgh
David Lindo enjoys some city birding north of the border in Edinburgh. Join him ‘looking up’ on
The Scottish capital lies on the eastern side of Scotland on the southern shoreline of the Firth of Forth and receives its fair share of flyovers, from Goldfinches to Golden Eagles. Yes, the mightiest of Britain’s birds has been recorded drifting through Edinburgh skies – albeit, after the event via satellite tracking data. Evidently, it drifted over unseen because nobody was looking up at the time. Seeing as the city is a seat of education, people probably were too busy looking down with their heads buried in books!
But while you wait for your chance sighting of a drifting eagle, you could best
fill in the time by visiting a couple of the sites within the city where you are guaranteed birds. Think Edinburgh and you would be forgiven for considering Musselburgh or Cramond that, without a shadow of a doubt, are the two best sites to find yourself in when you are in the Edinburgh area. Crucially, both are outside the city and therefore do not technically qualify as urban birding. So, to stick to the urban criteria of this column, you will have to set your birding crosshairs among the concrete and asphalt
Duddingston Loch, located in Holyrood Park, just below Arthur’s Seat, the city’s leading landmark, is a good place to start your urban explorations. It is a mediumsized water body nature reserve, and is the only natural loch in the city.
The site attracts a fair number of waterfowl, including Gadwall and Goosander, and there are even breeding Water Rails. It also holds about 30 pairs of breeding Grey Herons, which are a big attraction for many non-birders. Unfortunately, the once regular Great Crested Grebes appear to have ceased nesting. Interestingly, there is a reported mixed pair of Peregrine x Lanner breeding in the park. As a consequence of this unnatural coupling they have produced hybrid youngsters that, in turn, will have probably caused many identification headaches for the local raptor watchers.
The Royal Botanic Garden is also a place worth pitching up at. In truth, it is an underwatched 70-acre site and the bird list is not amazing, probably representing the typical woodland mix of species, but there is one major avian draw – the resident Kingfishers. Apparently, they are exceedingly photogenic and seem to love standing in front of the adoring cameras. Indeed, many people come to the Botanic Gardens purely to gaze at them.
Another headliner was the popular Sparrowhawk webcam. The webcam on a nest in the Botanic Garden first went live in May 2013, and it quickly made the news when a crow predated it. The webcam no longer seems to be operational. Sparrowhawks have been the subject of extensive study in the city since 2009 with the Edinburgh Hawkwatch Project monitoring the breeding population.
Perhaps more productive would be a visit to the coastline, especially in the buzzing and trendy Leith area to the north of the city. Leith Docks are particularly
interesting. During the breeding season, up to 1,000 breeding pairs of Common Terns can be found. Surprisingly, while watching the terns, it is possible to spy the regularly returning Roseate Tern from the Ocean Terminal car park. There is no access to the docks, owing to high security, apart for the local ringing group, who are allowed in twice a season to band birds.
It was discovered that in recent years there has been a mixed pair of Roseate x Common Terns breeding and their resulting offspring are probably causing many binocular-holding hands across the globe to be thrown up in the air in despair! Regardless, this Roseate Tern is one of the very few breeding away from the known sites like Rockabill, Co. Dublin or the Farne Islands off the coast of Northumberland.
If you venture down the coast road during the winter at Seafield, just east of Leith, you should be able to catch sight of great sea-ducks, such as Velvet Scoter and Long-tailed Duck, as well as scarcer grebes like Slavonian. If you deploy a scope, you could add the likes of Black-necked Grebe, or even the long-staying Surf Scoter loafing off Musselburgh on your urban birding list, while standing on Edinburgh soil along the esplanade at Seafield or Joppa. This possibility obviously depends on where these birds are in the bay.
Finally, worth investigation is Blackford Hill and Pond – a sizable slice of windswept countryside run by the council. The pond attracts Little Grebe while the surrounding scrub and grassland are good for Stonechat, Linnet, Sky Lark and Meadow Pipit. These sites are not well known for unusual species, but one should never forget that anything can turn up anywhere at anytime.
Thanks to: Stephen Welch –
SOC Lothian Bird Recorder. Email: lothianrecorder@the-soc.org.uk Fiona Cowie for additional information.