11th and 12th August
Still breezy and overcast with a few spots of rain on the
11th with the major surprise of the day being the typically brief
reappearance of the White-winged Black Tern in
front of the seawatch hide to a visiting birder – with the vast majority of the
Arctic Terns already departed south we naturally assumed that it had also
headed off back to whence it came! As
with every blog post this summer, the rest of this one will end up with a list
of wader numbers which today included 167 Oystercatchers, 1,110 Golden Plover,
63 Sanderling, 83 Dunlin, 4 Ruff, 4 Black-tailed Godwits, 136 Redshank, 2
Greenshank and 215 Turnstone.
Other
little bits of note included a couple of medium sized Little Grebe chicks which
appeared on Brides Loch, 9 Manx Shearwaters offshore, a Heron, 8 Wigeon (the
first ones for about a month), 5 Lesser Black-backed Gulls (very scarce over
the summer) and another juvenile Stonechat at Westness.
Ruff, photo George Gay
Still
overcast on the 12th but with much lighter winds, only a couple of
brief showers and the end of the time consuming Sheep Festival we finally had
the chance to concentrate on ringing the now pretty well grown Fulmar chicks
spread around the island and enjoy the sights, sounds and definitely the smells
of this joyful task! There was some
time for birding though and today’s wader report comprised 86 Ringed Plover on
The Links (a notable increase), 1,086 Golden Plover, 135 Lapwing, 25 Purple
Sandpipers, 2 Ruff, 4 Black-tailed Godwits, 29 Bar-tailed Godwits and 2
Whimbrel.
Also
seen today were a female Peregrine south past the airstrip, 4 Manx Shearwaters,
a Heron, 3 Gadwall, 13 Teal, 12 Shoveler, 9 each of Arctic Skua and Great Skuas
marauding about the place, a start to the post-breeding build-up of Kittiwakes
roosting along the coast with 46 off The Lurn including several juveniles and 9
Sand Martins.
Twite, photo Simon Davies
Wheatear, photo Simon Davies
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