Saturday 3rd May 2025
An adventurous five members turned up in glorious sunny conditions and despite the strong westerly breeze there was plenty of Green-veined Whites and Orange-tips already flying about. This trip was about seeing the Lesser Whitethroat and hopefully the Holly Blue butterfly as I had seen both in amongst the coastal Hawthorn and Blackthorn scrub on Greenan shore last year. Despite playing the tape lure walking along the thorn scrub strip, we got no challenging response. We did see and hear plenty of other warbler species such as Common Whitethroat, Sedge Warbler, Blackcap. Willow Warbler & Chiffchaff. We also saw Yellowhammer, another scrub loving bird species particular to this South Ayrshire coast, giving its distinctive wheezy “little bit of bread and no cheeeese” tag line! Speckled Wood butterflies were also flying along the scrub and nectaring on gorse flowers.
Despite our best efforts searching around Greenan shore, I decided we could try checking other habitat sites further south. So returning to the car park we all piled into my car and headed off a couple of miles south to check Bower Hill and Bracken Bay. Bower Hill boasts large areas of Blackthorn scrub but with that strong westerly breeze, it was suppressing the number of singing warblers!
As some of us were helping Iain negotiate crawling through a barbed wire fence. I noticed a male Peregrine Falcon stooping on a fleeing Jackdaw which rolled away from its clutches at the last split second. The Peregrine pulled up from the failed attempt with a ripping swoosh of displaced air. What a breathtaking display of aerial prowess, only seen by myself and a prone Iain! Heading back I heard a Lesser Whitethroat give two brief song phrases some distance away hidden in a dense Blackthorn bank. Our next port of call was Bracken Bay, walking along the disused railway line that runs into Dunure. This site offers tremendous coastal views. Another Lesser Whitethroat was briefly heard singing a distance away out of sight and despite the shelter from the wind, still no appearance of the mythical Holly Blue. As far as I’m aware there has been no sightings of this butterfly from those sites we visited this month – despite the good weather – maybe it’s been a poor season for Holly Blue?
Sixty bird species seen and heard include Gannet, Cormorant, Shag, Grey Heron, Mute Swan, Shelduck, Mallard, Eider, Peregrine, Oystercatcher, Ringed Plover, Curlew, Black-headed Gull, Common Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Herring Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Sandwich Tern, Wood Pigeon, Collared Dove, Skylark, Swallow, House Martin, Meadow Pipit, Rock Pipit, Pied Wagtail, Wren, Dunnock, Robin, Stonechat, Wheatear, Blackbird, Song Thrush, Mistle Thrush, Grasshopper Warbler, Sedge Warbler, Lesser Whitethroat, Common Whitethroat, Blackcap, Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler, Goldcrest, Long-tailed Tit, Coal Tit, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Jackdaw, Rook, Carrion Crow, Raven, Starling, House Sparrow, Chaffinch, Greenfinch, Goldfinch, Siskin, Linnet, Bullfinch, Yellowhammer, and Reed Bunting.
Tom Byars
Paisley Natural History Society 