Scotland Visit Day 5 : Montrose Basin : 12th September 2011
On Monday we had to return to Manchester but we still had a couple of interesting places to visit on our way back. Firstly we wanted to go to Montrose Basin Local Nature Reserve and then to break up the journey a bit we planned to stay the night in Dumfries so that we could fit in a visit to WWT Caerlaverock before making the final leg of our round trip. On our way to Montrose Basin from New Deer we encountered large flocks of Lapwing in the fields as well as lots of Swallows and House Martins. Montrose Basin itself is on the East coast and is tidal so best views are obtained relative to the high and low tides. The habitat consists of different zones ranging from mud banks, fresh water, sea water, brackish water, saltmarsh, reedbed, unimproved grassland and arable land. This means that an huge variety of birds can be present at any given time. They also have an artificial sand bank wall for Sand Martins which we saw the last time we visited but this time they had all gone by the time we got there. There are also a number of hides at other sites around the visitor centre that are well worth visiting but we didn’t really walk around, partly because we had so little time but also because the leftover weather from an American Hurricane Katia was due in so the weather conditions were deteriorating and we had to get to Stirling before the storms came. Fortunately, it is a really interesting visitor centre in itself with big windows overlooking feeders, lakes and the basin itself so there was lots to look at regardless.
Just below one of the main windows in the visitor centre are a couple of bird feeders and on them we saw lots of Chaffinches, Goldfinches and Greenfinches as well as Great Tits, Blue Tits and Coal Tits and plenty of House Sparrows. Under the feeders were Dunnocks, Woodpigeons and Pheasants. In the roof space of the visitor centre nesting Swallows came and went.
As you looked out to the basin a whole sandbar was occupied by around 20 Common Seals and on others could be seen large flocks of Lapwings, Oystercatchers, Redshanks, Black-tailed Godwits and Great Black-backed Gulls. On the Tern Raft there were still a few remaining Common Terns and on the water there were hundreds of Mallards and Cormorants and possibly around 200 Eiders. There were around 20 Mute Swans and also some Knot apparently but I couldn’t make them out.
They layout of the visitor centre is really good with bins and scopes set up for the general public and lots of id books spread around for consultation. They have monitors showing pictures from their web-cams situated at various points around the site as well. So even though we did not have much time there we still felt that it had been well worth the visit. We really need to make an effort to visit the remoter hides the next time we go there because the range of birds is impressive and some of the hides probably afford much closer views of numerous species. On this occasion, however, we needed to beat the incoming storm so we had to leave to get to Stirling. As it happens, the last hour of our journey was all howling gales and battering rain so we were glad to get to get safely to Stirling where we had a quiet evening.
Bird List
| Species | Count |
|---|---|
| Mute Swan | 20 |
| Mallard | 40 |
| Eider | 20 |
| Pheasant | 2 |
| Cormorant | 100 |
| Oystercatcher | 30 |
| Lapwing | 40 |
| Black-tailed Godwit | 12 |
| Redshank | 30 |
| Great Black-backed Gull | 20 |
| Common Tern | 1 |
| Woodpigeon | 4 |
| Carrion Crow | 10 |
| Blue Tit | 6 |
| Great Tit | 6 |
| Coal Tit | 2 |
| Swallow | 10 |
| Dunnock | 3 |
| House Sparrow | 10 |
| Chaffinch | 12 |
| Greenfinch | 6 |
| Goldfinch | 10 |