Sun 26th April

A phone call from Michal, alerted us to a "twitch" over at the RSPB reserve at Loch Gruinart this morning. Not just one bird, but at the end it turned out to be a twitch of 4 different species. The initial call was for a Lesser Yellowlegs and a Long billed Dowitcher, and these were easily found after prompting from James, as they were quite close to a Shoveler, but skulking around the rushes in the floods in front of the hide. The next shout was for the Green winged Teal, and more was to come, in the sense that at one point, all three birds were in the same field of view in the 'scope at once, at 60x magnification! They were seen by quite a wide range of folk, as the Argyll Bird Club were over on Islay for a weekend meet, and several of their members were fortunate to be there. Some visiting birders also saw the birds and equally impressed. The other species that James had seen briefly was a Spotted Redshank which he saw briefly around 6am. JRH

Back to our usual birds, and Margaret and myself had seen several Golden Plover, some Ringed Plover and a few Dunlin in a ploughed field over at Ballinaby yesterday evening. Whilst over at Gruinart this morning, we noticed 54 Shelduck and 44 Barnacle Geese mixed in with some Gulls on the salt marsh below Craigens Farm. Back here at home, before breakfast, the Cuckoo was in full song. Later on I had another first, and I had to double check, a Wheatear on a bough of a tree. I have seen them often on the ground, on a rock or on a dyke, even a fence post but never before on a tree!