The Montrose Basin
The Scottish Wildlife Trust reserve of Montrose Basin provides a habitat for many waterbirds. We arrived at about 3.00 p.m. with the intention of seeing multitudes of Pinkfoot geese which roost in the Montrose Basin.
We did not expect to see a Kingfisher but indeed this was the case. The warden and two or three local ornithologists in the visitor centre were very helpful in pointing out the habitual perches of the kingfisher, immediately below the visitor centre’s windows and within full view of their powerful telescopes. We were treated to close views of a female Kingfisher which was sometimes diving for fish from a perch and sometimes hovering above the water before diving. The bird concerned was a female - we learned that the females have more red on the lower mandible than the male. We were additionally lucky in that it was sunny and the ‘tropical’ colours of the Kingfisher were clearly visible. The pools of brackish water in front of the visitor centre have been furnished with a variety of suitable perches and one pool is backed by a semicircular wall adorned with dark holes and designed as a Sand Martin colony nesting site. The wall is made of white concrete blocks with a hole that goes right through to a supporting bank of sand into which the birds make their nesting burrows. Each hole is numbered so that ornithologists can record the comings and goings and assess the breeding numbers. There were no Sand Martins at this time of the year, of course, but it was interesting to see the provision made for them.
The kingfisher, delightful as it was, represented just the overture to the ornithological opera.
We had come to see the Pinkfoot Geese and we were not disappointed.
There are fortunately still some Wildlife extravaganzas in the world. The migrating Wildebeests or Caribou, for example, but for the Scot there is no need to travel out of Scotland. Eighty thousand Pinkfoot geese (80,000!!!) descending to roost on a small area of the Montrose Basin is truly one of the world's wildlife spectacles. As the light begins to fade they come skein after V-shaped skein. Sometimes they come in hundreds, sometimes they come in thousands. Always they are calling. The honking occupies the air like an invading army of sound. They come from the west. They come from the north. They come from the south. They have been feeding in Aberdeenshire, Angus and Fife. They come in ragged vast flocks. They come in close formation. They come in tens or even singly, trying to catch up. They come low out of dark cloud. They look like dark cloud. They come high, like midges against a blue sky. They straggle. They mass. They swirl. They drop together, whiffling to spill the air from the long wings and drop, apparently out of control but not. They drop to form a living dark mass of cacophonous ‘goosedom’ on the dimming water. Always the breeze is pulsating with their calls. They are a murmuration like starlings but on a much grander scale. They come and they come and arrive and arrive and appear out of nowhere and can there be any more? yes, there is another huge flock dropping out of the gloom and even that is followed by another thousand and then there's another.
The Montrose Basin becomes an ‘Iceland-full’ of Pinkfoot Geese. They breed in Iceland and migrate to Scotland for the winter.
At dawn they all rise up together for the day.
The gargantuan flock departs as one superorganism to the sky.
Wow is such an inadequate word, but WOW! nevertheless.