VISITORS to the West Coast of Scotland can see some odd little birds bobbing about in the water around the rocks, and sometimes around the boats in small harbours. Some of them are black with a large white oval on their wings, others are a more patchy black and white.
They are black guillemots, relatives of the larger common guillemots and the razorbills. The black birds are the last ones to have kept their summer feathers; the patchy ones are moulting into their whiter winter plumage. Many of the latter cannot fly because they are shedding their flight feathers, but those that can go whirring over the water. They all reveal a bright red inside to their mouth if they open their beak, and bright red legs if they come up on to a rock.
In Scotland they are more commonly known as tysties, and are very popular birds. The name “tystie” is thought to represent their shrill whistle. These birds will have nested at the foot of the cliffs in cracks and crevices, or in holes in harbour walls — if “nested” is the right word, since they lay their eggs, normally two of them, straight on to the rock without any nesting material. A pair was once found with eggs in the mouth of an old cannon at Carrickfergus Castle.
The birds on the water include many young ones. These were growing up in their crevice or hole for about five weeks, and then were abandoned by their parents, and left to find their own way to sea.
Common guillemots and razorbills go far out into the ocean after breeding, but the black guillemots stay around the coast. This is because they feed mostly on the bed of the sea, and although they are good divers and underwater swimmers, they depend on fairly shallow water. They eat small fish, crabs and shrimps. They sometimes work together, encircling a shoal.
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Like many young birds, the juveniles may wander off for a while. The largest numbers in Britain are in the Outer Hebrides, and in Shetland and Orkney, and they may be met with on much of the Irish coast, on Anglesey and on the Isle of Man. In England they are only at St Bee’s Head in Cumbria. They breed all round the North Atlantic, up to the Arctic Circle.
I love looking down from a cliff and seeing them splashing about in the water below. They have suffered at times from a shortage of sand eels, but luckily their numbers just now seem to be reasonably stable.
derwent.may@thetimes.co.uk
WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR
Birders Grey wagtails, now more widespread on lowland rivers and streams. Twitchers Glossy ibis, Radipole lake, Weymouth, Dorset; olive-tree warbler, Boddam, Shetland; red-footed falcon, Minsmere RSPB reserve, Suffolk; citrine wagtail, St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly; Baird’s sandpiper, Hayle estuary, Cornwall; semipalmated sandpiper, Newport wetlands, Goldcliffe, Gwent.
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Details from Birdline, 0906 8700222 (60p a min) www.birdingworld.co.uk; www.rspb.org.uk