Thursday 27th October

A busy day out here with sightings coming in from a lot of folk, great, so here goes. Carl had been in at Loch Skerrols and had seen the drake American Wigeon, is it the same bird that Peter had first spotted down at Gartmain? A visitor had a count of 92 Whoopers at Coull Farm and a further 27 at Sunderland, both on the barley stubble fields. Becky and Fiona had been up towards Bunnahabhain today and had a pair of Bullfinches, at least 2 pairs of Crossbills, a Barn Owl at Staoisha Earach and also a Blackcap at Bunnahabhain. This morning over the flats at Gruinart, the geese were spoofed by a Golden Eagle, earlier in the week it was the RAF boys that spoofed them! Round above Craigens on the estuary, there were 15 Shelduck. Peter had been up the back of Loch Skerrols and had an immature Golden Eagle, and later on 4 Red legged Partridge were seen too. Another annual visitor from Yorkshire had been in touch with the sighting of 8 Long tailed Ducks on the top of Loch Indaal, along with 7 Slavonian Grebes and 5 Scoter. Up at Ardnave he had seen 4 Snow Bunting. At Gruinart today James had 87 Golden Plover, 8 Black tailed Godwit and 1 male Hen Harrier. We also had one round at Saligo midday today. I had not seen any Buzzards for a few days but we saw 4 yesterday round Loch Gorm at different locations... Today, from his house down at Bruichladdich, George had a mixed group of 70 Gulls, mainly Common & Herring Gulls with a couple of Lesser Blacks too. George also had 15 Arctic Terns, 10 Guillemots and 8 Scoter.