24th-25th August

With signs of birds easing away and a couple of days of bright weather the 24th and 25th still had some surprises left for us!
Land migrants were much of what we had on the 23rd, one of the Red-backed Shrikes around the obs remained present as did the Redstart, 3 Spotted Flycatchers and 9 Pied Flycatchers remained, singles of Lesser Whitethroat and a Black Redstart at Holland kept things interesting.
A big jump in Golden Plover numbers has them topple the 1000 mark with 1108 being the highest total from the two day spell, no doubt there will be more to come!
Other wader number seemed to stay fairly similar 4 Little Stint were recorded on both days, 12 Ruff on the 25th was the highest count for a while. The Wood Sandpiper still remained on Gretchen and another joined it for a brief spell on the 24th.
The Merlin that's been present is still hanging around and Peregrines have been seen both days, we assume they're hunting over here from other islands.
A sea-watch provided the bird of the period, a single Cory's Shearwater was seen heading West at 13:20 on the 25th, while be accompanied by 10 Sootys and 4 Manxies.
Last but not least a Marsh Warbler was found late yesterday afternoon at Bridesness, it hung around long enough for everyone to get a good look.
It seems this short period of good migrants is perhaps coming to a close, but as they say, you never know!
On a sadder note, Gary Prescott the biking birder has moved on to Fair Isle for the next two months, it's been a privilege to learn from him for the last 3 weeks and the obs staff will certainly miss having him around! We wish him all the best on his quest for 300 species and hopefully we'll have something good enough this autumn to draw him back!

(apologies for the lack of photos in this post, having a few technical issues!)  

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