Perched on Europe’s edge, and surrounded by food-rich seas and shores, Scotland is an essential filling station for migrating birds, a safe winter haven for ducks, geese and shorebirds, and the ideal summer home for nesting seabirds. If you’ve never or visited one of Scotland’s big ‘seabird cities’ in summer, or seen the huge flocks of geese at Caerlaverock or on Islay, prepare to be amazed! Scotland has over 140 sites so important for birds that they are protected by international designations.
Contents
Scotland’s birds
Scotland’s birdlife is amazing… and important
Scotland’s birdlife has been famous for centuries – but why is it so important, and why should we care for it?
Location, location…
Perched on Europe’s edge, and surrounded by food-rich seas and shores, Scotland is an essential filling station for migrating birds, a safe winter haven for ducks, geese and shorebirds, and the ideal summer home for nesting seabirds. If you’ve never or visited one of Scotland’s big ‘seabird cities’ in summer, or seen the huge flocks of geese at Caerlaverock or on Islay, prepare to be amazed! Scotland has over 140 sites so important for birds that they are protected by international designations.
Our diverse countryside, our special birds
Within the UK, Scotland is the main or only home for a range of species. We have a special responsibility for:
- Crested tit – you’ll only find this little gem in our Scots pine woods
- Chough – with bright red feet and legs, this is the comical crow of the coast
- Sea eagle – visit Mull to see the flying barn door
- Capercaillie – ‘horse of the forest’, the world’s biggest grouse
- Corncrake – sympathetic farming on Scotland’s west coast is the key
- Osprey – spectacular fish-eater and icon of bird conservation
- Bonxie – dive-bomber extraordinaire
Getting involved
There are lots of ways to see and learn about Scotland’s birds, starting right on your doorstep. Making and putting up a nestbox is a great way to get kids interested. Get garden birds to come to you by putting out peanuts and other food, and contribute to valuable monitoring schemes like Garden Birdwatch . There are lots of local clubs and other organisations to help you get more out of your birdwatching.
Woodland birds
Woodlands are hugely important habitats for Scottish birds, and not only because of the large areas involved. Scotland’s fantastically rich native oakwoods support an exciting and distinctive breeding bird population which includes common redstart, tree pipit and wood warbler, while our Scots pine woodlands (both planted and naturally-occurring) are home to capercaillie and crested tit.
The planting of the uplands with exotic conifer species transformed entire landscapes during the second half of the 20th century. The effects on bird communities were dramatic, but perhaps surprisingly, a wide range of species can be found in these novel habitats. Species more normally associated with broadleaved woodland and open ground can thrive in the various growth stages present in many older conifer crops. For instance, meadow pipits, tree pipits and whinchats breed on clear-felled areas, dunnocks, lesser redpolls and willow warblers are to be found in crops before canopy closure, while song thrushes, blackbirds, woodcocks and several species of raptors occur in older tree stands. In addition, species that rely on conifers have greatly extended their range in Scotland, including siskins, common crossbills, goldcrests and coal tits.
Capercaillie
One of the few Scottish birds whose common name derives from Gaelic, the name ‘capercaillie’ translates literally as ‘horse of the forest’. This impressive bird, whose main habitat is Scots pine woods, is the world’s largest grouse species. It has had a chequered history in Scotland, and is now the focus of targeted woodland management, including at the RSPB’s reserve of Abernethy.
Crested tit
This unmistakable bird seldom strays far from the Scots pine woods which are its main home. Females excavate nest-holes in old pine stumps, parties of fledged young can be seen from late May onwards, and in winter the species can often be seen with other woodland birds such as goldcrest and blue tit.
Scotland has a special race (or subspecies) of crested tit, Parus cristatus scoticus. Other forms of crested tit occur in Europe.
Redstart
One of the most distinctive summertime visitors to Scotland’s western oakwoods, this colourful member of the thrush family makes the long journey from Africa each spring. They seek out holes in broad-leaved trees for nesting, but also take readily to nestboxes.
Visit SNH’s Taynish National Nature Reserve during the early morning in late spring and early summer, and you’ll probably be rewarded with views of male redstarts defending their territories with song, from the very tops of the oak trees.
Freshwater birds
Scotland’s fresh water environments are diverse, extensive, and typically have a high water quality. It’s therefore no surprise that they support a wide range of bird species. Small burns provide nesting habitat for grey wagtail, dipper, goosander and common sandpiper, while the shores of nutrient-poor upland lochs are breeding sites for red-throated diver, black-throated diver and greylag goose. Lowland support nesting mallard, gadwall and shoveler and, in Orkney, pintail. Larger lochs support important numbers of wintering ducks and geese.
Many previously extensive wetlands have been much reduced or lost altogether due to drainage and agricultural improvement. With appropriate management, however, sites can be recovered. For instance, through careful control of grazing and water levels, wetlands at the RSPB reserve of Loch Gruinart on Islay have been developed into superb habitats for nesting and wintering ducks and waders.
Red-throated diver
The haunting calls of ‘rain geese’, together with their amazing water courtship displays, are part of what makes the remote moorlands of West and North Scotland very special. These primitive looking birds use the shores of hill lochans for nesting. Vulnerable to disturbance, changes in water level, and predation by non-native species like mink, red-throated divers have been helped by positive conservation action, including the provision of artificial floating islands for them to nest on!
Osprey
The sight of an osprey plunging feet-first into a loch to catch a fish is one of the most memorable and exciting of Scottish wildlife experiences. It seems strange that this beautiful bird, now so popular, should have been persecuted to extinction in Britain by the early years of the 20th century. Re-colonisation occurred in 1954 at the site where you can still view them today – Loch Garten, in Speyside . Since then, Ospreys have spread slowly but steadily in Scotland, where more than 140 pairs now nest.
Dipper
This is one of the most characteristic, and characterful, birds of our clean burns and fast-flowing rivers. Immediately recognisable by their constant bobbing motion, dippers ‘fly’ underwater to reach the stream bed, where they feed on freshwater invertebrates
Upland birds
Scotland’s extensive areas of uplands and moorlands support a range of common and widely distributed species, such as meadow pipit, skylark, whinchat, Northern wheatear, stonechat and twite. Parts of Scotland’s uplands are also of international importance for their concentrations of breeding waders including golden plover and greenshank, while our highest mountains are home to rare breeding species including dotterel and snow bunting.
Red grouse
Grouse moors cover large area of the Scottish uplands. These areas are managed intensively by regularly burning the heather into strips and patches, providing a mosaic of young plants and shoots for food, and taller more mature plants to provide shelter. This leads to the ‘patchwork’ effect seen on many hillsides in south and east Scotland. Grouse shooting makes a significant contribution to the rural economy.
Seabirds and shorebirds
Scotland’s long and convoluted shoreline, much of it relatively undeveloped, provides diverse and extensive habitats for shorebirds. Wintering waders such as oystercatcher, knot and bar-tailed godwit occur in internationally important numbers at our major estuaries like the Firth of Forth and Solway Firth, while Orkney’s undisturbed rocky and sandy shores are a major wintering and migration stop-over for turnstone. Our country’s rocky islands and mainland sea cliffs are the summertime home of hundreds of thousands of seabirds, providing some amazing wildlife spectacles. Sheltered coastal waters are a safe winter haven for mergansers and divers, while the productive seas of the continental shelf lie within easy foraging distance off the west coast.
Storm petrel
Amazingly, this diminutive seabird spends almost all of its life out at sea. It only comes to shore to visit its nest, which is located in a burrow, in a crevice between boulders, or sometimes in dry stone dykes, and then only at night. Numerous but difficult to survey, storm petrels are normally counted by playing back a recording of a male bird’s call, and then counting the number of birds that call back in response.
Eider
This beautiful seaduck is a widely distributed breeding species around Scotland’s shores, and nests in nationally important numbers on the Ythan estuary in north-east Scotland. Outside the breeding season, it is mainly found in sheltered coastal waters, sometimes in flocks several hundreds strong. Mink, foxes and disturbance by dog-walkers are all problems faced by nesting eiders in Scotland, and the fondness of this species for shellfish has sometimes brought them into conflict with mussel farmers.
Lowland and farmland birds
Scotland’s farmland and croftland is extremely important for a range of bird species which have successfully adapted to these man-modified habitats. At the same time, changes in agricultural practice can have big impacts on the populations of farmland birds. For example, arable crops are now rarely grown on Scotland’s west coast, which has caused significant declines in previously common species such as skylark, corn bunting and yellowhammer. Meanwhile, the steep rise in areas managed intensively for silage (grass that is cropped and stored for winter feed) has caused dramatic increases in the populations of wintering geese. Low-intensity agriculture, particularly in the Hebrides, still provides ideal conditions for high densities of breeding waders such as dunlin, oystercatcher, ringed plover and redshank.
Corncrake
The corncrake is an example of how reliant some birds can be on particular systems of land management. Once widespread and very numerous across the UK, corncrakes thrive when farms have plenty of tall vegetation for cover early during the breeding season, and systems of late cropping which allow the adults and young birds to survive. Changes to farming in the 20th century led to corncrakes crashing in a few short decades, but they retained a toehold on Scotland’s western and northern edges. Numbers have now recovered following targeted habitat management, but most of their previous range is still unoccupied.
Urban birds
Even small areas of greenspace can be important for those birds that have been able to adapt to our heavily modified habitats and to our disturbance. Most of these species were originally found in woodlands and at woodland edges. The widespread provision of peanuts and other bird food in gardens by householders has increased the winter survival of species like blackbird, song thrush, robin, siskin and coal tit, while nestboxes are readily adopted by blue tits and great tits in areas with few natural holes suitable for nesting. A bird table outside the living room window is a great way to start bird watching.
