beardies!

 

16-10-26 This was a brilliant day out. I'd seen a couple of folk (separately Caroline and Richard) post photos of the bearded reedlings near Errol. (Previously known as bearded tits.) Last year Mary and I failed to see them mid-November, in a drive-by shooting attempt on the way home after a family visit to Aberdeenshire. I knew Mary wasn't that keen for more of the same, so tried to form a plan to get there solo.

My first thought was the train. The nearest stations to Errol are Perth and, less conveniently, Dundee. For the day in question, sunny Friday 16th, there was a train back from Perth that was bookable with a bike place but the early morning train North with a bike icon was not reserve-able. Do I risk turning up at morning rush hour with the possibility of not being in the first three barging onto the bike carriage? The tickets were about £28 return and it all seemed a bit fraught. 

However I then noticed (while googling travel options) that there appeared to be a bus run by a private operator called Ember. They ran a service that headed towards Perth before turning right to Dundee. There was a request drop-off and pick up at St. Madoes just 4 miles along country roads from Errol. While there was a connecting bus service that went to Errol, I also thought a 4 mile jog is do-able.

Then another possibility occurred. I typed do Ember buses take bikes? Back came the answer YES! Now we are cooking. My next question was do they take Saltire cards to which the answer was also positive. I rushed to the Ember website and things only got better. The bus from George Street to St. Madoes was actually quicker than the Perth train, could be booked in both directions, and dropped me about 6 or 7 miles closer to Errol than the Perth train. And, being free, was £28 pounds cheaper. All I had to do was get to the East end of George Street for 8am Friday. I made my sandwiches the night before. 

the magic begins

I still had grave doubts the bus would actually materialise when I turned up, bleary eyed but wide awake from the 10min cycle up from Leith. Happily another cyclist was also using the service and was able to reassure me they were all they said on their website: super-modern sleek electric single deckers that took 56 passengers and 2 bikes (maybe room for three if not taking too much luggage from other passengers) quickly between major cities in Scotland, at a speed to rival or better the trains. (Under four hours to Oban from Edinburgh!) and setting off at regular intervals through the day and night.

It seemed like my need had somehow conjured up this fantasy service and I spent the day slightly nervous that the dream might have a harsher reality. Surely such a good thing could not be true? A reliable, eco-friendly, convenient, fast and bike-friendly bus across most of Scotland and it is free! Spoiler alert: somehow this utopia seems to be true. 

And it gets better: booking is done by registering your email on the Ember website. After that you tell them you have a bus pass (and a bike) and want to go from A to B (and perhaps later same day, back from B to A.) As long as you book ten minutes before the bus leaves, the driver welcomes you by name onto their rather lovely bus. They know where you are going and will hopefully remember to open the hold doors (under the seating) to let you retrieve your bike when you get off. Smaller places are request stops and because there aren't that many between major towns the journey is nearly as quick as going by car but with much less stress.

Ember routes

Reclining seats and USB charging ports (2 per seat) and even a three pin plug socket. I cannot tell you how impressed I was. So much so, I felt paying the full price (£14) would still have been a bargain, and by-the-way fuck you Scotrail, this is quicker, as comfortable, more convenient, more friendly - they know your name as you get on and don't even ask you to show a mobile phone scan, cheaper and a great company to support. (And there is an onboard toilet.) Did I mention it is free for over-60s with a bus pass?

BTW I checked to see if they are refunded by the govt. for the free ride and they will get a proportion of that fare so they are not out of pocket. Had this not been the case I might have paid the £14 just to support the service. There were maybe a dozen people on the journey North but the return from Dundee was about 2/3rds capacity, so it looks like I am one of the last folk to hear about this company. I booked the 13.36 back to Edinburgh as I reckoned that gave me at least a couple of hours on site, plus a relaxed cycle of 4 miles and then the same back to St. Madoes.

note screen centre front telling you next stop and ETA if running late

Also, in order for things to go smoothly I asked google how you pronounce St. Madoes. Was it a hard or soft A? Saint Made-ohs or Saint Maddows? Google seemed to suggest it was the former which wouldn't have been my guess but that's Scottish place names for you. The bus driver pronounced it St Maddows. I am going with Maddows.

St Madoes to Errol on bike - 4miles in 21mins

I got off at St Madoes maybe three minutes after the scheduled time around 9.30am. Things were looking propitious although the weather was not quite the blue skies of the forecast. And there was still the bus home and whether it arrived. I contemplated the possible cycle home if it didn't show up and shuddered. (There was always Scotrail 7 miles away.)

My bike flew along the 4 miles of country roads beautifully. I had cleaned and oiled the chain, pumped the tyres, charged the bike light batteries and given it a bed bath with wet wipes after considering the Ember request to use a bike bag if your bike was filthy. My bike responded well to the TLC and galloped along the 4miles in 21 minutes, both directions. I nearly stopped for a field full of pheasants hardly awake and within camera range. But felt I needed to concentrate on the task at hand. I could get them on the return if all went well.

walk of less than a mile to grit tray (red arrow)

Having visited Errol with Mary a year ago I knew the landscape. I didn't want to be pushing my bike around the reed beds so rode it down to the community garden where I padlocked it to a row of hoops for cycling gardeners. I walked in from there although I forgot to put my gps watch on for the first hundred yards hence the red start circle nearly halfway to the reed beds.

I passed a dude with a long lens camera and wellies. He saw my camera and said they're showing well without even mentioning the birds in question. This was all going far too well!

essentials: long lens and wellies

Hopper-like scenery

You keep going straight through the fields to the treeline where there are buildings on your left (Tay Lodge) and then another hundred yards to where half a dozen folk with binoculars and cameras are wandering around looking intensely into the seven foot high reeds. I quietly joined them with no more than an occasional raised-eyebrow silent-hello. We all looked into the reeds, occasionally lifting a camera and shooting off some frames. I flipped through the menus on my camera to find Silent Mode as it is only polite to turn the clicks and bleeps off. I think all of the photographers there had done similar - usually there is some twat with a really noisy full frame and huge lens making an arse of themselves.

Although I was initially less than delighted to have fellow bird enthusiasts around me they all seemed to be respectful and considerate and we shared warm smiles and whispered chats as the birds came and went. 

a fun day out!

male beardie - females lack the moustache-like black face patches

the other denizen of the reeds - a reed bunting (m)

female bearded reedling

reed bunting

I spent the first while trying to get shots of the beardies on reeds. Famously there is a grit table in one of the channels between the reeds where the birds will arrive in numbers to eat grit. Beardies eat grit to grind down tough reed seeds in their gizzards. They have small delicate bills that cannot crack open hard seed shells, and the grit acts like tiny millstones to break down the seeds into a digestable pulp.

It proved far easier to photograph the birds on the grit tray and there was a small queue of bird folk standing at the mouth of the grit tray corridor. As those at the front with the closest view of the table had had their fill and left, the queue slowly moved one or two steps closer. The day before I had gone into a pet shop and bought a bag of bird grit. I thought this was beyond the call of duty and super keen, however in whispers I learned the couple behind me had brought grit too. So had the bloke at the front of the queue although his female companion would put it on the tray because she had wellies on and he didn't. The dude behind me was a cheerful chap and jokingly rested his long lens on my shoulder.

Soon I was at the front of the queue and although you would get maybe 10~15 mins of empty tray and just occasional birds in the reeds, all of a sudden half a dozen beardies would swoop in and start pecking at the grit. I took loads of photos but binned most as the light was much better later and consequently the photos too.

There weren't that many other folk there - never more than 6, and some were bored or disinterested partners and/or family members. A regular, if quiet, stream came and went. I had to take a bit of a wander round the area just to clear my head and get my legs working again after a bit of a stand.

The weather improved and it became a really nice place to be spending a few hours. There had been comments about a couple of swallows that were flying overhead and I noticed they were having a breather on a dead tree 60 yards away. I walked over slowly and managed not to scare them away. They let me get really close and I shot these pics and video. To my untrained eye the larger bird might be the parent of the juvenile on the right. I'm guessing the parent is holding off until the younger bird has the requisite skills and feathers to do the long migration to Africa. Most swallows have already left.

parent and juvenile?

probably pink-footed geese

request / complaint

request denied!

reed bunting

juvenile abandoned - note tail feathers not as long as parent's

parent - longer tail feathers

juv

swallow video

soundtrack (aptly): Alone Together by Rizik

rose bedeguar gall

I was very pleased with myself for noticing this wasp gall on the tip of a wild rose stem. I have been on about them before. (Aka Robin's pincushion or mossy rose gall.) They are not super rare but easy to walk past unnoticed. The adult gall wasp Diplolepis rosea injects chemicals into the leaf buds on the end of a stem, which force the rose to build this protective nest for its larvae. To me this is fascinating and something of a miracle - bio-engineering by a tiny wasp to create something that the rose wasn't intending. Anyway, having seen one I checked all the rose plants up the return walk, and did not find any further examples.

reed bunting

more geese overhead

back to the grit

reed bunting

Mr and Mrs

this and next 3 images are stills from a video clip,
in the youTube video below I ran them as a super-slow sequence

They are a charming and fairly social bird. I have seen up a to a dozen sitting together on this wooden platform and although they mostly get on fine shoulder to shoulder, there is also quite a lot of bickering, and squabbles. Largely just gentle spats and forgotten in seconds. Neither gender seemed dominant or worse for kicking off. Both were capable of emptying the table but also happily sharing it with another 7 or 8.

Realising shots of the grit tray were comparatively easy and shots in the reeds more natural but harder to come by I tried to get more in the reeds. However the birds weren't really helping much and although I could catch glimpses of them sitting in the reeds it was very tricky getting decent photos. 

probably as good as it was going to get

best of the bearded reedlings clips

soundtrack: Sad Boy by MÜNE
(although that peeping was a constant all day)

this brave one had been there for a couple of hours before I arrived
and seemed to be there for the whole day!

And that was about that. I'd spent just over 2hrs taking photos and was watching the time, conscious that I wanted to cycle back (relaxed not sweaty) to St Madoes for at least 01.20. Just to give a large margin of error in case of punctures and the like. So I headed up to my bike a bit after 12.30. I had a good chat with a local dogwalker beside the community garden while I unpadlocked my bike then set off back to St. Madoes.

same scene but sunnier

Errol in the background

While I was standing waiting at St Madoes I got an email or maybe text message saying my bus was running a bit late with a new departure/arrival time. I knew this from the bus stop where a sign similar to the onboard digital sign at the front of the coach, said the Edinburgh service was running about 10mins late. It duly arrived and the woman bus driver ( Eastern European and very switched on) helped me get my bike into the best hold area to store it. I noticed the bike of the other guy who had also set off from George Street that morning. He had got off at Kinross to cycle to Dundee where he jumped on this bus to return to Edinburgh. Great use of a (free) bus - to go somewhere interesting for a bike ride rather than just the same old, same old: leaving town by the same roads to go a familiar route.

on the left, the rail bridge

The Queensferry crossing was quite congested so the driver cannily took the old road bridge so we got a great view of the rail bridge on one side and the Queensferry crossing on the other. We got back to Edinburgh very speedily and my first Ember day out was an excellent example of their service. It all ran smoothly, the drivers were both welcoming and helpful (and great drivers) and the email thing is a great way to run coms and book tickets. And I get all this for nothing. You can be sure I will use this service again. If I had known it existed during the Summer I'd have been over to the West coast (Oban) and maybe up North hunting dragonflies. Great potential for dotting about the country. I see they go all the way to Thurso which makes bike trips to Orkney a possibility too. 

on the right, the Queensferry Crossing
note: internal screen above driver's head showing 2 x reverse view 

in place of wing mirror

absolutely FAB day out and home by 4pm