2014 - March BTO waterbird count, Linlithgow - Philpstoun

My monthly BTO WeBS count along the Union Canal, Linlithgow to Philpstoun.

 

 

Monday 17th March

 

my walk to Burntisland station, 7.05am

Up at 6.30am

left house at 7

train from Burntisland 7.22

arrived Linlithgow 8.01

brief stop at dad's to breakfast and drop my rucksack

 

 

The count:

Start time 8.20am
turnaround time 10am

End time 10.40am

 

Weather - Windy! Strongly blowing from west to east (the prevailing direction). Some glimpses of sun but mostly dark and threatening rain. Rain didn't arrive until I was nearly home.

The flood field - still quite extensively flooded. Lapwings are back and displaying for spring. They nest here each year. Before we knew anything about them the first time Jennifer and I saw and heard the courtship flight of a lapwing was here. The squeaking and tumbling of the bird in the sky before us made us think it was injured.

huge paddle wings

upside-down!

Waterbirds seen on/around canal:
 
Canal
Mallard 19
Moorhen 5

Flood field
Wigeon 31
Greylag goose 107
Pink-footed goose 110
Lapwing 12
Pied wagtail 1


All birds seen:

Blackbird
Blue Tit
Bullfinch
Buzzard
Carrion Crow
Chaffinch
Dunnock
Feral Pigeon
Goldcrest
Goldfinch
Great Tit
Greenfinch
Greylag Goose
Herring Gull
House Sparrow
Jackdaw
Lapwing
Long-tailed Tit
Magpie
Mallard
Moorhen
Oystercatcher
Pheasant
Pied Wagtail
Pink-footed Goose
Robin
Rook
Skylark
Song Thrush
Starling
Tree Sparrow
Wigeon
Woodpigeon
Wren
Yellowhammer

35 species 

One of my favourite views on the walk. I've seen dippers and a kingfisher on that stream.

Scotland by Rail - Dundee. A dragon, penguins, Lego

I was going up to Dundee for the opening of Gallery Q's Drawing and Painting exhibition. It's the first time I've shown in Dundee and I'm very pleased to be exhibiting in such a lovely gallery space (see my paintings here). It also has given me a push to look around the city a little. I decided to make this a Scotland by Rail day.

I knew I wouldn't have much time for sketching once there -only a couple of hours before the exhibition opened, and I wanted to walk around and explore- so on the journey up I set aside phone, book, RSPB magazine, and watched out the window drew.

spot Arthur's Seat & Salisbury Crags

My journey was Burntisland to Kirkcaldy; short change in Kirkcaldy; Kirkcaldy to Dundee. Leaving Burntisland at 9am, the sun was low and its light silvery, combining with plentiful clouds to make a morning of high bright-dark contrast.

When at the station, always make sure you...

MIND THE GAP

Passing through Kinghorn you see a tower with a slender cross on top, in the distance is North Berwick Law, if the weather is clear.

on-train sketches

A crow perched on a chimney pot.
Ivy-covered trees.
A distant castle, Union Jack flying.
Curlews in a field.

During my 10 minute change at Kirkcaldy I made quick drawings of a herring gull that padded on grass and rooftop. The wind was cold on my hands. Two Swans flew past, high and huge.

on-train (and platform) sketches

Then woodpigeons in a hedgerow, like baubles on a tree. A similar sight has attracted me in the past to make this painting, now at the World Land Trust Gallery in Suffolk.

festooned with woodpigeons, acrylic, 17.5x16.5cm, World Land Trust Gallery

DUNDEE

Now Dundee, where at present you walk up steps from the station and emerge into a building site. It'll be good in a few years when current £1bn waterfront developments are complete -including a branch of the Victoria & Albert Museum- but for now it's rather uninspiring.

Ignoring that, directly across the road from the station is HMS Discovery. Once she sailed the Antarctic, surrounded by icebergs, captained by Scott. Now she sits in dry dock, ringed by security fencing, guarded by cameras, yet she still looks magnificent. A walkway leads from Discovery Point west along the concrete banks of the Tay. There were gulls and pigeons in the air plus house sparrows, robin and blackbird in shrubs alongside the walkway. And a few penguins.

penguins, mosaic, HMS Discovery

spot the ScotRail train

On to the shopping streets of the city - remember to look around and you'll see quite beautiful old buildings. The Steeple Church is one to stop at (more penguins, waddling along its boundary wall) but the architecture of the McManus Museum & Gallery is the best of all. Though Queen Victoria didn't look too pleased. Perhaps it was a bad apple.

Queen Victoria, not pleased with that apple.

On the High Street an even-larger-than-life-size Desperate Dan strides along in bronze, Minnie the Minx behind him, aiming her catapult. Further around the same street is a dragon. Turning left past the dragon onto Commercial Street you find The Burgh Coffee House. If you like Lego this is the one for you, make sure you walk up the stairs to the upper floor. Just beyond Lego and coffee is Games Workshop, and just beyond Games Workshop is the McManus. Dragon - Lego - Games Workshop. My childhood dream street!

I know their clothes are desirable, but a dragon??

Then it was time for Gallery Q, on the Nethergate, only a five-minute walk from the main shopping area. A great exhibition of paintings and drawings by eight artists, a big variety of subject and style. See the whole show here. Nice chats with other artists and collectors, and catching up with my good friend Martin (Hill) who is exhibiting alongside me (see his pig). Martin and I both grew up in Linlithgow, spending our Academy sixth year in the art department whilst others became proficient at common room cards.

du Feu corner

spot the pig (Martin's)

Whitesands, short-eared owl, acrylic, 56x76cm. £1,250.00 (lovely frame by Bon Papillon)

Dunnottar Castle, watercolour, 25x35.5cm. £650

Back to the station, passing DCA (Dundee Contemporary Arts) with its international exhibitions, excellent design & craft shop, plus cafe, bar, cinema. There's obviously a lot more to see in the city: the hillfort of Dundee Law; Balgay Hill and Park and Cemetery, including Mills Observatory; and a bit further out Camperdown Country Park including country house and wildlife park. I will visit again and walk more extensively.

Leaving Dundee, look for the feet of the old Tay Bridge, collapsed 1879. 75 lives, a train & 6 carriages lost.

How to get there:

Trains to Dundee leave Edinburgh and Aberdeen every half hour (journey time approx 1 hour 10 mins),
Glasgow every hour (journey time approx 1 hour 20 mins),
Perth every hour (journey time approx 25 mins)

Timetable - Glasgow/Edinburgh/Perth/Aberdeen - Dundee

2014 - February BTO waterbird count, Linlithgow - Philpstoun

 

My monthly BTO WeBS count along the Union Canal, Linlithgow to Philpstoun.

 

 

As part of efforts to improve screen vs. canvas balance I'm going to try to keep most of my canal-count blogs much shorter in the past. Just the basics of what I saw, perhaps primarily as a record for myself. If anything really exciting comes up I'll try to include it. Like January's mole.

Friday 21st Feb

Start time 8.20am
turnaround time 10am

End time 11am

 

Weather - cold and windy from east to west. Sometimes a little rain.

The flood field - quite extensively flooded - 119 wigeon making use of it. On my route this is a very hight count for any species.




Waterbirds seen: 

Curlew 2 - on flood field
Goosander 5    
Mallard 3    
Moorhen 5    
Wigeon 119 - on flood field
Black-headed Gull 2    
Common Gull 2    
Dipper 1 - zoomed past on stream below canal bridge just east of Philpstoun. I heard rather than saw it.




All birds seen:

Black-headed Gull
Blackbird
Blue Tit
Bullfinch
Buzzard
Carrion Crow
Chaffinch
Coal Tit
Common Gull
Curlew
Dipper
Dunnock
Feral Pigeon
Goldcrest
Goldfinch
Goosander
Great Tit
Greenfinch
House Sparrow
Jackdaw
Magpie
Mallard
Moorhen

Pheasant - a black one, as you sometimes see. Other than the red facial wattles it's whole body was in iridescent greeny, purple-y, blue-y blacks.

Robin
Song Thrush
Starling
Treecreeper
Wigeon
Woodpigeon
Wren
Yellowhammer

32 species

This is spot the black pheasant. The black spot is this pheasant.

identify the fungi. on an uprooted tree

lots of them. growing from earth around the now air-exposed roos

Woodhall Spa, Lincoln, 98-year-old Granny

This Friday-Monday mum and I visited Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, to see my granny (dad's mum) who is now in a home there. Granny is 98 (and a half) and has had a fascinating life, growing up on a farm on Jersey and living through the German Occupation there. Her diary of that time is published as Jersey Occupation Diary, as imaginatively named as my Landscapes and Birds of Scotland. Author is Nan Le Ruez, publisher Seaflower Books. It's very much worth reading, includes a snippet at the end about the amazing story of her second marriage, age 89, to Jimmy Cooper, one of the island's liberators. Order it here or from your local bookshop.

Woodhall Spa is nice. Gentle and relaxing. We were in a lovely cosy little self-catering studio, me on the sofa bed. Granny was too tired for long visits so instead we would see her for an hour or so several times a day. The rest of the time (except for the cafe) we were outside. There are walks all around the village; woodland and farmland and moor. Lots of areas are nature reserves. We saw all the regulars plus jays, redwings, fieldfares, sparrowhawk, buzzard, green woodpecker, Egyptian geese...

Lincoln, no imps on view. A city of brick and sandstone, beautiful in this low winter sun. A very nice giftshop, Forty Four, part way up the hill sells moomin merchandise. Moomins are hard for me to resist. The Collection museum and the Usher Gallery are very very much worth a visit. 

Roughton Moor Woods, Woodhall Spa. This orange lichen on one side of many of the trees. Mum on the other side of one of them.

For my brother Roan

We stopped to paint here. Half an hour in watercolour. 

The largest slices of cake we've ever been served. Very nice, very sweet. Me almond & cherry, mum carrot. 

 

We adventured through a bamboo forest. Spot the (smaller, more female) artist in some of the following pics: 

Moor Farm Nature Reserve. Mum painting. 

We'd heard a green woodpecker laugh (they yaffle. Their Olde English[e] name is Yaffle) and I was desperate to try to see one so I went wandering, retracing our trail. emerging from wood through gorse alley to open grassland I saw one, standing alert, beak to the sky. I had about ten seconds to watch it through binoculars and another ten with the naked eye while I fumbled to get camera-phone to binocular lens before it flew. I didn't. It did. Eight or more magpies flew off too. I quickly sat and sketched what I could remember, and the scene. In the evening I studied green woodpeckers in more detail through internet photos.










Green woodpeckers are known for foraging on lawns, probing deep with their long beaks and even longer tongues. When I walked to where woodpecker had been I saw dark holes among the tussocks. Each was about as deep as my pinkie finger is long, and wide at the surface, narrowing almost to a point at the bottom. My pinkie fitted them perfectly.









Mum likes sheep, goats, etc a lot. Probably more than birds. Fair enough. These are Hebridean sheep, on the reserve.

Spot the muntjac.

Spot the muntjac track. 

Two Egptian geese. We were very surprised to spot them but subsequently have learned (thank you Lincolnshire Bird Club) that a small population breeds around here.

Jersey Granny, 98 (and a half)