curlew – Walking without a donkey

Documentation

A small group of us met for a Community Walk on Wardie Bay by Granton Harbour, and walked along the coast in the direction of the Forth Bridges. We slid on the ice as far as the Boardwalk Beach Club and then headed inland to Lauriston Farm.

Silverknowes coastal walk – taken a week earlier

We were scanning for eider, curlew and oystercatchers, birds which are all currently on the RSPB Amber List because they are under threat from ocean pollution and decrease in habitat and safe feeding grounds.

The second in my series of 30×30 Biodiversity (pen and ink on watercolour paper)

The UK’s breeding curlew population has halved in the last 25 years.
https://www.gwct.org.uk/action-for-curlew/about-curlew/

While we waited, I spent a considerable time removing this yellow fishing net which had become entangled with the seaweed on the beach

Straightaway, we spotted a few oystercatchers foraging on the Eastern breakwater with their red-orange bills and distinctive Balenciaga colouring. Unfortunately my phone camera cannot take good photos at a distance

Dogs were chasing the waders and we talked about how much energy the birds expend escaping them, energy they cannot afford to use up when the ground is frozen at this time of year and short daylight hours are filled with finding food.

The walk had to be cancelled the week before on account of the snow. This Saturday it was icy underfoot. Kim, Ewan and Jennifer

There were eider ducks floating, thank goodness, plus cormorants and herring gull, redshank, guillemot and turnstones, great crested grebe, mergansers, and grey plover.

Another poor quality long-distance shot, but I managed to capture the cormorant skimming away from the rock it had been sunning on

By the time we reached hot chocolate heaven with cold hands and full bladders, the rain was coming on and we admired the rainbow beside Cramond Island

As we walked inland, we spotted a kestral hovering with wings spread, listening to something it had spotted, plummeting, and then sitting in a tree nearby, perhaps digesting

Lauriston Farm have recently fenced off their lower field so that migrators can overwinter there safely – commendable work that will benefit us all. Jennifer, Ewan and Kim, trusty fellow walkers

Other sightings: crows, robins, magpies, blackbirds, fieldfare, a heron, and a flock of linnets.

Lauriston Farm, higher up, offers a glorious view of the Fife hills. We stopped to chat with Toni, one of the tireless team who run it, and Bob, a local birder who said the curlew “are definitely coming back”. Not ten minutes later as we walked to the bus stop, he was proved right. By the road was a group wandering and feeding, and again, taking off when they were disturbed, needlessly, by a jogger who ran through their midst.