These Scandinavian arrivals are a bit friendlier than Viking raiders
Scotland’s colourful history provides us with many connections with other nations in the world.
The Auld Alliance with France springs to mind and our strongest overseas connections nowadays are perhaps with the New World countries of America and Canada – simply because so many Scots were among the pioneering founding fathers of those two nations.
However, it is to the north and east we should perhaps look more intensely, for among our strongest historic links are surely those with Scandinavia, once perhaps regarded as the source of much grief during the long years of Viking raids upon Scottish shores.
It was the sight of a rabble of “Viking invaders” making their way noisily over local fields that began this train of thought. A mixed flock of fieldfares and redwings typically hurtling through the air, with the usual accompaniment of much loud “chacking”, indeed seemed a manifestation of a modern day Viking invasion.
Of these Scandinavian thrushes, the larger fieldfares are comparable in both size and nature with our mistle thrushes but with grey heads and grey rumps, whilst the smaller redwings are about the same size as our song thrushes. Redwings are well named as they display bright red flashes on and under their wings. Along with their frequent companions, the fieldfares, they always seem hungry and always to be in a hurry!
These Scandinavian thrushes are notorious when they arrive on these shores, usually in October, for stripping any remaining berries from our shrubs and trees not previously taken by our sedentary blackbirds, thrushes and starlings. The aforementioned berry gobblers certainly ensured that those Viking invaders won’t arrive here on my rowans, for by September there was not a berry to be seen!
However, the fieldfares and redwings are also frequently to be seen feasting on invertebrates in surrounding fields. I suspect however, that the recent hard weather may well have forced many of these invading thrushes to move even further south, perhaps to places where the Mediterranean laps on warmer shores but then those same shores were also investigated by the early human Vikings too! They certainly put themselves about those Norsemen and are said to have made landfall in North America long before Christopher Columbus got there!
However, although these avian invaders may be the most evident and obvious visitors from Scandinavia (some come from Russia too), there are many other migratory birds from that quarter, which probably go largely unnoticed simply because they are indistinguishable from their British based counterparts. You might for instance be surprised to learn that large numbers of moorhen from Scandinavia augment our winter population of these familiar water birds. And how for instance, can you tell the difference between a goldcrest that has incredibly flown here all the way across the perilous North Sea and a British resident goldcrest? They are identical, so who knows what the origins be of any goldcrests you should spot?
Goldcrests seem to me to be the most unlikely migrants, simply because they are so minuscule. It might be thought they would be too fragile to undertake such a journey but they do … in their thousands. Old folklore suggests that goldcrests actually hitched rides on the backs of migrant woodcock – an unlikely story but one which once gave the goldcrests the name “woodcock pilots”. This story possibly gained some credibility from the confirmed fact that woodcock sometimes remove their own young from their territories by carrying them in their feet!
Goldcrests of course, are natives of our coniferous woodlands, as are those curious birds, crossbills. Periodically, should the Scandinavian cone crop fail, crossbills, which feed exclusively off conifer seeds, also make that North Sea crossing, although only very occasionally. However, our native population of crossbills may in part owe its origins to such migrations.
Another winter visitor to look for is of course the exotic looking waxwing. We are visited by waxwings most winters but periodically they come in surprisingly high numbers – known as irruptions – usually when the Scandinavian berry crop fails. These colourful birds do not hide their lights under bushels and may often be seen openly feasting off the berries of various decorative berrybearing shrubs planted in our parks and gardens.
And you may during these winter months, become familiar with goldeneye on many of our lochs. These are wild duck, rather chunky birds with quite blocky heads. The drakes, largely black with a green sheen and white – dark on the upper parts but white at the waterline – are readily recognised by the two prominent white cheek patches on the dark head. Their eyes are notably golden. The duck is largely grey with a brown head and does not have cheek patches. As spring slowly advances, the drakes may be seen displaying to the duck by throwing back their heads, raising their tails and kicking up water prior to their departure and subsequent courtship in their native Scandinavian heath.
Only rarely have goldeneye been recorded nesting in Britain but in their native Scandinavia, they willingly use nest boxes in trees. Indeed, the Laplanders have been encouraging them to nest in such boxes for many years now, in order to procure their eggs! I often see goldeneye on our local loch during the winter months. They are currently sharing those waters with a couple of dozen whooper swans, which of course, come from Iceland rather than from Scandinavia.
There are many other Scandinavian in-comers, perhaps the most unusual, being the short-eared owls, a bird I am used to seeing hunting on our open moorlands and in young, newly planted conifer forest. They are unusual in that, unlike other owls, they are very much daytime hunters quartering low over that moorland on exceptionally long wings, ready to drop like a stone on to an unsuspecting vole. It seems likely that most of the migrant short-ears may largely confine themselves to coastal areas such as salt marshes rather than resorting to the higher places.
It is strange how some birds can look particularly menacing, even when merely sitting on fence-posts as short-ears are often wont to do. But short-eared owls, with their exceptionally piercing, simmering yellow eyes, leave the observer in no doubt that they are predators - very determined hunters and merciless killers of voles, whether they come from Scotland or from Scandinavia. Perhaps they are a true manifestation of those ancient Vikings?