Lockdown Listing Top 5 – #4 Nocturnal Migration
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been spending more time in the garden after dark with the hope of hearing some of our more unusual migrant birds passing over. Many birds take advantage of the cooler night temperatures to undertake their migratory journeys and listening for the ‘Seep’ calls of first Redwing’s arriving on a clear September/October night is one of the birding highlights of my year, but for a relatively short period every spring ( late March early April ) a very special bird can, with luck, be heard passing over (even in urban land locked Derby). The Common Scoter!
Common Scoter male, West Friesland, Netherlands. 24 February 2017, 13:39.Source trauerente_2017-02-24_holland_2017_tgp_008. Thomas Griesohn-Pflieger (Wikimedia commons)
Common Scoter (Melanitta nigra) are a sea duck that spend much of the winter off the coast of the UK before returning to breed on remote freshwater lakes in Scandinavia and Siberia in the Spring. A handful of pairs also nest on remote Locations in the North West Highlands of Scotland making them the UK’s rarest breeding Duck. Most winter gatherings are off the West Coast of Britain at places like Liverpool Bay and these birds move cross country to stage in the North Sea before heading back to their breeding grounds.
The bulk of the migrating birds cross the north of England between Greater Manchester and East Yorkshire regularly passing over the northern part of the Peak District but with birds flying over from the Bristol Channel too, they can sometimes be heard further south.
So when reports started to appear on social media that Scoter migration was underway I started some late night nocturnal migration sessions in the back garden. After a couple of unproductive nights (where all I picked up on was a few Redwings and the usual sounds of barking dogs and police sirens) I got lucky on Friday 3rd April when I heard the the soft, high pitch yapping calls of a Scoter flock flying over and then, five minutes later, a second.
A wonderful experience and something I’ll be trying to record again next spring, after all its not often you can add a sea duck to your garden list!
