Bird life at West Ord over the "summer"

July/August 2012.   

     During the period it has been very wet and ” unsummer like”.  This has caused the Tweed to be in ‘spate’ on numerous occasions with disastrous results for the Sand Martin colonies at West Ord. Most birds had given up any breeding attempts and moved on by the end of July. 

The wet didn’t seem to affect Grey Partridge numbers with small covies seen at both West Ord & Loanend.

On the Tweed, record numbers of moulting Goosander were seen with 200+ at the Estuary’s mouth at Spittal in August. An early arrival of three Goldeneye at West Ord (Jul 20th) could be of Scottish bred birds.

The Tweed is both a natural flyway and migration route for winter & summer migrants.   Post breeding Lapwing reached 130+ at New Water Heugh (Jul.27th) with ‘local’ Greylag Geese rising from 156 birds(12th Aug) to 630 by the 26th.

 An Osprey (immature) was watched over the island on the Tweed, by the farm early p.m. (Aug.16th) , this is the 3rd sighting here this year. Sandy (husband) observed an Osprey while fishing on the Watch Water Reservoir on 25th July, it is reckoned by the locals to be a young male, and caused amusement when it’s initial attempts at trout fishing met with disaster! 

Small migrants were on the move by mid August with all the Swifts leaving Berwick by the 12th.

This information has kindly been provided by Malcolm Hutcheson.