THE GORGE OF THE
ALT-NAN-CREAMH.
by
Islay Manley
Part 2
Other users of the ravine and its surrounding are, of course, the fulmars and a colony of about 20 or more pairs nest in holes and on ledges on the cliffs of the gorge and on the bluffs of Port Crom. Many more than 20 pairs frequent the site but the surplus are non-breeding birds who may return to the place of their birth for many years in succession before themselves finding mates and nesting. In the meantime they sit about the grassy banks in quacking parties or glide effortlessly, with scarcely a movement of the wings, to and fro between the bluffs and the sea. The breeding birds lay their single egg in May and it is at this time that the cliffs are most populous with a constant coming and going of parent birds relieving each other on the nest and, after the eggs are hatched, bringing food to the young ones. Gradually the bustle diminishes as the fledglings grow and the visits of their parents become less and less frequent and, eventually cease altogether.
Other inhabitants of the cliffs are the jackdaws who compete to some extent with the fulmars for desirable nesting sites, and are even noisier and more restless than their competitors -quarreling, mating or merely communicating between themselves from dawn to dusk. Some twenty-five pairs nest here, chiefly on the lower parts of the bluffs, preferring, in the main, especially old rabbit hole, to ledges, and thus managing to cohabit fairly amicably with the fulmars who, on the whole, prefer ledges on the upper parts of the cliffs.
There is one particularly desirable ivy-draped hole, however, about halfway up a west facing cliff which is competed for year after year, not only by fulmars and jackdaws, but also by a pair of kestrels. One year a fulmar may secure the hole, another a jackdaw and a third the kestrel pair. If a fulmar or a jackdaw is victorious it is left in peace to lay its egg, or eggs, and rear its young but, if the kestrels win the battle, they are constantly harried by the jackdaws and have to fly the gauntlet of a vociferous mob of birds every time they leave the nest. In spite of this they have, in different years, brought off two broods to my knowledge.
Farther up the ravine, where the gorge is very narrow and the south side of it is almost sheer, a small flock of rock doves have established themselves on a north-west facing buttress of the rock wall. These birds are said to have become somewhat uncommon and have, even it seems, died out on the east side of the country, but this site evidently suits them as they nest here in crevices and on small ledges on the sheer rock face every year. There are about 3 or 4 pairs of them and, for the most part, they are very discreet. No squabbling and chattering goes on among them as it does among the jackdaws. Their grey and softly iridescent colouring merges so perfectly with the rock that it is only when they are disturbed and whir suddenly all together out of their nesting places, with a rush of wings and a flash of white rumps and underwings that one becomes aware of their presence. They are not frequenters of the beach and seem to feed mainly on the arable land on either side of the gorge.
On the west facing cliff on the south side of the ravine another member of the dove family has once chosen to nest. At a point where the sheer rock meets a less steep grassy slope a plant of honeysuckle has obtained a foothold and has rambled in every direction draping itself over several square yards of rocks and grass and its intertwining bines have former a solid platform on which, one year recently, a pair of ring doves built their flimsy nest and brought off two young ones. The summer air, that year, was filled with the sound of their crooning, reminding one of the very different and balmier landscapes of southern woodlands.
Another tree-nesting bird, the hoodie crow - which we could well do without at Fort Crom - has actually one year found itself a tree in which to nest - a stunted and deformed hawthorn, growing at an angle of 45deg out from the face of the rock some way inland in the ravine and, in the succeeding year a pair of buzzards foolishly . took this tree over, but it proved too weak a support for their bulky nest and, before the young could fly, the whole structure slipped, or was blown, into the burn. The buzzards have, however, built safely in other localities in the vicinity in other years and one of their favourite hunting grounds is the line of cliffs and bluffs of the old raised beach whose up-currents of air keep the birds comfortably hovering and gliding while they scan the ground for prey. The hunger of the young birds when they have flown the nest but are not yet entirely self-supporting seems insatiable. They perch on the fence posts of an arable field above the bluffs and keep up for hours together a querulous, demanding cry for food.
Coming down from the heights to ground level and among such vegetation as has managed to establish itself beside the burn at the foot of the ravine, a number of smaller birds find comfortable homes. The vegetation consists mainly of coarse grasses, bracken, bramble and whin with an occasional stunted sallow and, at one point, a little grove of shivering aspens, each small tree no more than 4ft. high. Under the aspen grove this year a pair of wrens brought off a brood and a few yards further upstream a hedgesparrow betrayed by his song that his nest was not faraway. These two are residents in the area, winter and summer. Spring visitors for several years in succession have been a pair of white-bibbed dippers who make their nest under the last cascade before the burn merges onto the flats. In May and June the parent birds are very busy collecting food for their young ones and, when the water is clear enough and not too stained with peat, they can be seen walking submerged along the bed of the burn in search of caddis larvae and such-like underwater tit~bits or, at other times perched, bobbing and curtsying, on a midstream boulder, their beaks bristling with the legs and wings of insects snatched from the air.
Another true water bird that nests in the ravine is the grey wagtail. One, and sometimes two, pairs return year after year and recently one of these pairs made their nest in a hole in the dilapidated masonry of a disused bridge over the Allt-nan-Creamh which once, before the coast road was built, carried the old high level road between Tangy and Bellochantuy. The grey wagtails much commoner near relation the pied wagtail, also frequents the burn. One pair is resident, winter and summer, like the wren and the dunnock, and comes regularly to winter bird crum'be. This year it nested in a hole in the side wall of the present bridge carrying the main Tarbert road over the burn.
At the point where the stream, leaving its last cascade, emerges out of the ravine, a sunny dell, filled with brambles, whins, dwarf oaks, a sallow or two, yellow flags and honeysuckle proves attractive every year to a pair of thrushes, a pair of chaffinches and, some years, more than one pair of blackbirds. Further out from the mouth of the gorge where the now placidly flowing burn is bordered by a tangle of nettles, thistles, meadow sweet, red campion and blackberrybines a pair of whitethroats used to return year after year to build but, three years ago, I listened in vain as spring advanced for their cheerful snatches of song and it was said by expert ornithologists that whitethroats which emigrate in winter to Africa by way of the Sahara had fallen victims to the terrible drought in that area. I thought I would hear and see 'my' whitethroats no more but this year in May, to my delight, a pair returned and built their nest again among the tangle by the burn.These birds and the thrushes are particularly welcome, not only for their songs but, also, as garden pest controllers - the thrush to prey on the multitudinous snails which rasp my iris leaves to tattered ribbons - his hammering of snail shells under my window often wakes me on a summer morning - and the whitethroat to feed on the greenfly which cover the rose shoots like a green lagging.
Besides the whitethroats two other species of birds, the mallard and the sandpiper, have, year after year, found suitable nesting sites along the last stretch of the Allt-nan-Creamh before it reaches the beach. The burn here runs through sheep and cattle pasture but its bed is still sunk below the level of the land and thus continues to give shelter to a fairly vigorous growth of brambles and other coarse vegetation which overhangs the water on both banks. Paddling up the burn one fine summer morning when the water was low I came suddenly on a mallard's nest hidden under an arching blackberry spray. The eggs were on the point of hatching and I watched while seven yellow-brown ducklings emerged, damp and cheeping, while the mother duck hid under.the bank's overhang. After a week,or so the family moved down to the sea and joined a family of eiders and all summer long the little flotilla frequented the burn mouth and the sea in its vicinity, swimming in and out among the rocks and diving along the seaweed covered reefs for food. All seven ducklings survived the hazards of greater black-backed gulls, hoodie crows and other dangers to fly away safely in the autumn with their parents.
For many years past a pair of sandpipers have returned each May to nest somewhere along the banks of the lower burn and what returning warblers' songs are to the English countryside the returning sandpiper's song is to Port Crom. They both mean that spring has come again. All May and June the male sandpiper sings almost without ceasing and, waking in the middle of the night, one can still hear his song, mingled with the querulous cries of oyster-catchers and backed by the sound of the sea. This year the birds hatched 3 young ones which for about ten days or so ran round the beach like little toy birds on wheels or sat on stones, bobbing their tiny tails in comical imitation of their elders while these, their parents, fussed around them with anxious warning cries. The anxiety was well founded for suddenly one morning the little family were no longer there and I remembered that the previous evening a pair of greater black-backed gulls had rested and preened themselves on a rock at the mouth of the burn and I suspected the cruel pair of murder. Next May I shall listen anxiously for the song that will herald the return of my spring birds.
Other frequenters of the beach are a pair of oyster-catchers and usually, several pairs of ringed plovers. The oyster-catchers were originally attracted to the locality, I think, by a small mussel bed situated in the sea at the mouth of the burn - a source of food which they dispute vociferously with all intruders. For three or four years now these birds have chosen to lay their eggs on the top of one of three grass covered stack rocks at the edge of the sea where they are in full view of the house and I can observe the patience of the sitting bird as it broods the eggs, hour after hour, and the vigilance of its mate standing guard beside the nest and keeping a weather eye open for danger from the sky in the form of marauding hoodie crows, jackdaws and gulls. If any of these eggstealing enemies come near the rock the guardian bird launches itself at them with outraged cries. The sides of one of the favoured stacks are about 20 feet high and absolutely sheer and it is a mystery how the chicks manage to reach the ground without damaging themselves. I think, in fact, that accidents are fairly common as I have found more than one dead youngster at the foot of the stack.
The other beach nesters, the ringed plovers, seem to regard the house as just another rock. They have no fear of it and most years at least one pair nests on the beach within sight of the windows. Here they crouch scarcely distinguishable, except for one bright watching eye, from the pebbles around them. Rain, hail, storm or sun, the pair sit it out, cautiously and circuitously relieving each other until the instantly mobile young are hatched, when the hollow among the stones is at once abandoned and the whole family scattered along the tide line in search of sandhoppers and other tit-bits.
Other shore nesting birds are the rock pipits but they choose cracks and hollows in the rocks and, most years, a pair nest in a rock near the mouth of the burn. Wheatears choose very similar places to the pipits and for two years running a pair nested in the walls of the old dun, called Mhic Choigil, at the north end of Port Crom.
The house, itself, which is situated at the mouth of the Allt-nan-Creamh has been favoured by two species of birds: the starling, which has built many years in succession in an old cow byre, and the swallow, which one year penetrated the innermost recesses of the garage and there built its mud nest and raised two broods in it.
One bird I have not yet mentioned is the stonechat. It does not return regularly to the Stream of the Wild Garlic but one year it nested in a small patch of scrub on the bluffs and another year in a thick tuft of cocks foot grass on the,edge of the pebbles near Dun Mhic Choigil. Similarly, linnets certainly, and possibly twites as well are occasional spring residents in the few small thickets of brambles and stunted blackthorn on the lower slopes of the bluffs. I have heard their songs but never yet actually found their nests.
All in all, the Mountain Stream of the Wild Garlic is a natural miniature nature reserve, providing as it does a valuable sanctuary for between 20 and 30 species of birds which would otherwise find few resting places on Kintyre's wind-battered south west shore.
End