2022 - A Bumper Year for Rarities in Scottish Borders

R. JACKSON

This has been an exciting year for rare birds in the Borders, with an unprecedented seven firsts for the county (subject to ratification) and a strong supporting cast of second to fifth records alongside. Although the overall species counts has yet to be fully completed, it also looks to be the best number of species ever recorded in a year in Borders. There have been four ‘BBRC species’ seen and a further eight requiring SBRC validation. In most recent years it has been only one or two each of BBRC/SBRC species, at most.

The county list has grown steadily since the 1980s, generally increasing by a species or two each year over the last 25 years but with many years of no new birds (Figure 1). As might be expected, there was slightly faster growth in the 1980s and early 1990s, but even then the best year for firsts was 1983 with five.

With a relatively small population of local birders and a lot of territory to cover, the county is generally under-watched, so some of these ‘firsts’ are, no doubt, the county finally ‘catching up’, but it is not particularly clear why there should be such a good showing of rarities this year. They have come from both coastal hot-spots and more obscure inland areas and are spread over five months of the year, with some back-end loading towards November and December. But has any other area in Scotland seen so many new birds in a year?

This article will briefly describe these seven first records in order of their occurrence, using the finders’ first-hand accounts where they are available, followed by a short summary of the other rare finds and some speculation as to what might be seen next.

Introduction

Cory’s Shearwaters Calonectris borealis and Great Shearwaters Ardenna gravis are rare visitors to Scottish marine waters (Forrester et al. 2007; McInerny & McGowan 2022). In most years very small numbers are seen during the late summer and autumn, particularly during September, although in some years neither species are observed, and there have been larger influxes, with an exceptional c. 9,000 Great Shearwaters in 2007 (Figures 1–2).

Both shearwater species nest on islands in the mid and southern Atlantic: Cory’s mostly on the

Figures 1–2. Annual and seasonal occurrence of Cory’s Shearwaters and Great Shearwaters in Scotland by 10-day periods, 1950–2020 (McInerny & McGowan 2022). Note that in 2007 about 9,000 Great Shearwaters were observed; the graph has been plotted to truncate the data for this year to allow of resolution of the much smaller numbers seen in all other years. To examine the SBRC datasets from which these graphs are plotted see https://www.thesoc.org.uk/bird-recording/sbrc-species-analysis