Natural Environment

 

 

 

 

• Puffins: Common to Shetland and Orkney.

Puffins belong to the Auk family of sea birds, short winged sea and coastal birds, 60% of which are found and bred in Iceland. Puffins nest in colonies either in rabbit burrows or by digging out its own burrow by using its very effective bill as a pickaxe. It uses its webbed feet as shovels to fling earth, or even sandstone, backwards, as it builds burrows for a home for its siblings up to 3 feet deep. Having made the hole, or enlarged a rabbit burrow, it will take feathers, grass or seaweed into the burrow for bedding.

Puffins lay one egg per year and are known, through observation, to normally keep the same mate during the mating season. However, they do not spend all year together.

Typically, puffins grow to around 10 inches with the male only slightly bigger than the female. Both share the duties of incubating and feeding the chicks. With their unusual bills, puffins are able to carry several small fish such as sand-eels, herring, sprats and hake, due to the way the tongue can hold the spines of the fish against the palette.

Most puffins don’t breed until after the age of 5, but do learn feeding places during the pre-nesting years, location of nest sites and the choosing of a mate.

In wintertime, puffins tend to live a long way out at sea due to its ability to drink sea water and diving for food. Because of this, its orange feet – prominent during the summer months – fade to a dull grey in colour. The same is true of its colourful bill. On returning to land, from spring, the bright orange colour returns in preparation for the breeding season. It is common in warmer temperatures to see pairs parading together, showing their colourful orange legs among the orange lichens – or flap down to join rafts of birds on the sea below.

Entry made 22 November, 2007

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• Robins

The Robin’s popularity in Britain has built up over the years and legends about the bad luck incurred by anyone harming a robin go back to the 16th Century. A Christian link has been attached to the legend because the breast was allegedly stained red by the blood of Christ after the bird pricked itself on the ‘crown of thorns’. This is why the robin features prominently on the earliest Christmas cards.

Robins defend their territories all year round, they are not sociable birds. They use their red breasts to warn rivals off their territory and they will even go as far as attacking rivals.

Breeding pairs vigorously defend a territory in the breeding season and again in the autumn, the autumn territories being smaller than the ones held in spring. However the males and females defend separate territories in the autumn.

The adults get together in January and as they look alike they recognise one another by display and posture with the robin pairing accomplished weeks or months before any nesting attempt is made. Nests are made in unlikely places, for example kettles, buckets or even pockets of jackets left in garden sheds.

When building the nest the female begins to receive food from the male – the female relies on this form of feeding during incubation.

Generally 5 or 6 eggs are laid and after 2 weeks the eggs hatch. The chicks are blind and are covered with thin dark brown down. After another 15 days they tend to leave the nest, this is when they tend to face the greatest danger as they still are unable to fly.

By June the red breast begins to develop from the bottom upwards.

Once the young are fledged the adults will build a new nest in the same territory and raise another brood.

As many as a million robins die as a result of cats, owls, windows and harsh winters. So out of the original pair and their offspring only one adult and one youngster survive to breed the following year.

The robin enjoys popularity with man unrivalled by any other species, a familiar visitor at the bird table in winter and constant gardening companion – it is a year round bird.

An unmated male singing in his territory will act aggressively to any intruding robin. If the intruder is male it either retreats or tries to oust the resident robin. If it is a female seeking a mate she persists in approaching the male and over a period of time a bond is built up and they accept each other.

During the period of nest building and egg laying the birds occupy the same territory and recognise each other as mates but they do not pay much attention to each other.

The incubating female loses the feathers from her breast and belly and the blood vessels under the skin enlarge. This allows her to transfer heat more efficiently to the eggs.

Both adult and young robins feed on insect’s spiders and worms; they don’t tend to eat seeds or berries.

During the summer for around 5 weeks adult robins replace their old feathers with new ones. They stay in the same area but make themselves less obvious, they also fall silent, the only time of the year when you don’t hear robin song.

Because Britain has a mild, oceanic climate, many environmentalists are surprised by the amount of movement of northern and eastern populated robins, but some British robins have moved as far as Iberia. Further a-field from British shores there are populations in Tunisia, the Urals and the Caucasus, as well a more isolated population in the Canaries, here they appear a distinctly different breed. Wherever they are, they like a good deal of cover, some patches of open ground, and a song post or two.

 

Robins traditionally covered the dead with leaves, linking up with the legends of the babes in the wood.

Natural habitats for the Robin include woodlands, especially broadleaved woods with rich undergrowth. Also predominate within parks and gardens.

Within the British Isles about 6,000,000 pairs exist.

Entered: January 2008

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• Black Grouse

MALE HAS SHINY blue-black plumage and lyre-shaped tail feathers, fluffed out during courtship to reveal white under tail coverts. The female is smaller, with camouflaged grey-brown plumage. Bill slightly hooked. Flight involves rapid wingbeats, interspersed with periods of gliding. Often perched in trees.

 

The black grouse is one of our finest birds, and also sadly now rather rare.

THE VERY SPECIAL tail may not be conspicuous, but the white shoulder patches of the male are. The black body is glossed with blue. Almost as distinctive as plumage, behaviour and the dove-like bubbling is the flight which may be high, gliding on stretched wings or, as with other woodland grouse, involve rapid wing beats as the short-winged bird rises among trees. Females in flight have a whiter underwing than red grouse, a notched tail and often a whitish bar on the upperwing. On the ground her larger size and longer tail distinguish the so called ‘grey hen’ from a female red grouse.

Black grouse country has tall heather or young conifers to nest and hide in, together with patches of forest edge and rushy meadows that have not been improved for sheep grazing. These grouse like an abundance of shoots, buds and leaves, especially of heather and bilberry to keep the adults well fed. The young chicks need spiders, beetles, moth caterpillars and sawfly larvae; these are found among bog myrtle and the rushes and grasses of wet places.

In upland areas where rough grazing, moorland edge and heather have disappeared under conifers, and where fields have been ‘improved’, with the heather, boggy hollows and rushy fields enclosed by wire fences, black grouse have problems. They have little to eat, and few places to hide or nest. Other species such as lapwings, curlews, redshanks and snipe face similar difficulties.

Black grouse are famous for their leks in which the male birds gather to court the females. The leks are usually found in an open area of bog, marsh or forest glade; the males have their own territory within this open area, with low status young birds visiting as intruders. Those with central territories gain the majority of matings; they are usually the older birds. In display the males fan their tails wide: the white undertail converts from a circle as seen from behind. All of this is accompanied by a cacophony of ‘rookooing’ song which carries for up to 3 km (1.8 miles) but is extremely difficult to locate. There is also much rushing to and fro within the territory, and fighting at the boundary, which seems to attract the females. They have been at the periphery of the lek, perhaps in nearby trees, watching the males and sometimes preening. Successful matings also attract more females, so one success is likely to precede another.

 

PRESENT in Scotland and northern England. Extends from Belgium north to Scandinavia and east across northern Asia. Also found within Alpine region.

Entered: 17 March 2009

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