By Tony Marr
It was high noon on 19th November 2018. Time to fire up the Freelander, head for the ferry for the last time, and turn southwards on to the A9 at Inverness for the 1000-km drive back to north Norfolk. My ten-year idyll was over. I had exceeded my expectations; found some amazing birds; witnessed some of the most exciting visible migration spectacles to be seen in Britain; and made many new friends. It was a very satisfying outcome for an ornithological septuagenarian’s peregrinations, and has helped to put Lewis firmly on the birding map.
Some 60 years before that, as an impressionable schoolboy and a member of the RSPB’s Junior Bird Recorders’ Club, I had made three visits to Lewis and was captivated by its remoteness, isolation and special birdlife.
After an exciting birding life which included leading tours to both ends of the earth, I retired to Cley, in north Norfolk, and joined the ever-growing band of enthusiastic birders settling in Mecca. I adopted Blakeney Point as my regular haunt. However, I was restless after my world travels, and longed to be birding somewhere really remote which offered more opportunities for finding my own birds. The Outer Hebrides came into the frame, and I remembered Lewis. I took a short holiday there, which decided me, and bought a dilapidated cottage by the sea in Port of Ness as a second home.
I moved in early in the spring of 2009, and began an intensive daily migration watch each spring and autumn at the northern tip of the 250-km-long Outer Hebridean chain of islands. Within two weeks I had found a Killdeer Charadrius vociferus. I was in business!
Clinging precariously to the northwest tip of Scotland, Ness comprises the 16 small villages at the northern tip of Lewis, 43 km from Stornoway. It is exposed to seemingly perpetual gales and storms throughout the year. It’s a wild, wet and windy place in which to be out birding, day after day, and is in the Guinness Book of Records as the windiest place in Britain. Most regular bird migration is affected by the turbulent and unpredictable weather. Rare birds are blown in by it. Resident birds keep their heads down.
Spring sees the departure to Iceland of hundreds of Whooper Swans Cygnus cygnus and thousands of Pink-footed Geese Anser brachyrhynchus (up to 8,000 in a morning) coming through The Minch, whilst the machair around the Butt provides shelter and rest to these and many other wildfowl and waders when brought down by inclement weather. European Golden Plovers Pluvialis apricaria gather in thousands here throughout April and May, sometimes concealing rarer waders such as Dotterel Charadrius morinellus and Long-billed Dowitcher Limnodromus scolopaceus in their midst; a Pectoral Sandpiper Calidris melanotos or Buff-breasted Sandpiper C. subruficollis in some years; and even a Stone-curlew Burnhinus oedicnemus on one occasion. Waves of smaller waders continue to pass through well into June. Green-winged Teal Anas carolinensis and American Wigeon Mareca americana are almost annual, and a drake Blue-winged Teal Spatula discors spent two days in April 2018 on Loch Stiapabhat, a Local Nature Reserve.
Off the east coast is the annual spring stopover site for up to a dozen White-billed Divers Gavia adamsii between March and June. Every other year or so a white-morph Gyr Falcon Falco rusticolus graces Ness with its presence for a few days, as have Alpine Swift Tachymarptis melba, Pallid Swift Apus pallidus and European Bee-eater Meriops apiaster. Other notable spring overshoots have included Red-rumped Swallow Cecropis daurica, Woodchat Shrike Lanius senator and Icterine Warbler Hippolais icterina. A common Magpie Pica pica around the lighthouse early one morning proved to be the first ever recorded in the Outer Hebrides, as was the White-crowned Sparrow Zonotrichia leucophrys which frequented gardens in Ness over a three-week period in May 2016.
June and July provide a break from migration watching, and an opportunity to catch up with local breeding species such as Corn Crake Crex crex, Red-necked Phalarope Phalaropus lobatus, Red Grouse Lagopus lagopus, and both Golden Aquila chrysaetos and White-tailed Eagles Haliaeetus albicilla.
Ness autumns are prolonged, and start in mid July with returning Arctic waders and seabirds. The pools near the lighthouse, and nearby Loch Stiapabhat, draw in birds passing south. A good example was a Franklin’s Gull Leucophaeus pipixcan, the second for the Outer Hebrides, which dropped in for a few hours on 31st August last year. Waders have included Lesser Yellowlegs Tringa flavipes, White-rumped Calidris fuscicollis, Baird’s C. bairdii and Semipalmated Sandpipers C. pusilla and American Golden Plovers Pluvialis dominica, the last-named occurring in most years. The first Hebridean record of Black-winged Pratincole Glareola nordmanni stayed for five days and attracted just 15 people.
In complete contrast, the first Scottish and second British Wilson’s Warbler Cardenilla pusilla, in October 2015 (plate 198), brought 250 observers to the island during its five-day stay in a Port of Ness garden. The treeless windswept Butt makes passerine migrants hard to find, but with patience, determination and respect for the privacy of residents, they can be winkled out. A Yellow-billed Cuckoo Coccyzus americanus also came into that category. Easier to watch, once it had been refound after a four-hour search, was a Chimney Swift Chaetura pelagica which arrived at the Butt lighthouse on the tail end of Hurricane Gonzalo. And I haven’t mentioned the flocks of Snow Plectrophenax nivalis and Lapland Buntings Calcarius lapponicus; the Hornemann’s Arctic Redpolls Acanthis h. hornemanni; 72 Iceland Gulls Larus glaucoides in a day; the Ivory Gull Pagophila eburnea; breeding Tree Sparrows Passer montanus; or the Blue Tit Cyanistes caeruleus and the Great Tit Parus major. I could go on…
I have been able to find and identify almost every bird myself, which has been like winding the clock back. There’s that wonderful feeling of elation; the adrenalin rush; the satisfaction of adding a self-found bird to your list. The huge interest in watching birds continues to increase, and it becomes harder to find somewhere new and to do something original. The Butt of Lewis has everything – except many birders.
