Wednesday 28th, Thursday 29th and Friday 30th August

On Wednesday and Thursday the weather continued in its unpleasant formula of a bit of sunshine fooling us into thinking it was summer followed by black clouds and torrential downpours. It has gradually improved and Friday is pleasantly dry and sunny with a decent few days of weather forecast ahead of us.

The only report for Wednesday was from David W. on The Oa of 12 Redshank heading west over Glen Astle.

Thursday produced a Ruff  and Black-tailed Godwit at Loch Cornabus c/o Ed Burrell, 2 White-tailed Eagles seen by Emily McGarva at Claddach and a remarkable count of 575 Sanderling at Loch Gruinart from James How. That is almost double all previous high counts of the species on Islay.

Today, Gary T. found the usual White-tailed Eagle loitering on the grassy islands at the top of Loch Indaal near Bridgend, where later he saw two "teasing" several hundred Greylags. Gary was also watching on the Big Strand  where there were a few waders including 51 Ringed Plover along with 22 Pied Wagtails and 6 Ravens. Ed Burrell had a Great Spotted Woodpecker at Balaclava, heading towards The Oa - this is an unusual/new area for the species to be sighted on Islay. Ed later noted 6 Golden Plover at Cornabus. Linden up at Gruinart found a couple of Grey Plovers, while Mary Redman down at  Currie Sands was watching a ring-tail Hen Harrier and a couple of Choughs.

On my return from one of the Book Festival meetings this evening there was a young, fledged Tawny Owl by the livestock market at Bridgend. We first saw it when a car went over it as it sat in the middle of the road. We were close behind and unavoidably did the same thing as it first looked like a bit of rubbish in the road. We turned around to pick up what we assumed was going to be a corpse, but found the ground clearance of each car had been enough to leave the owl totally unharmed. I picked it up, assuming it was at least injured, but could see that the wings and legs were all intact. It gave me a finger-puncturing squeeze from its talons and flew away strongly into the woods - an extraordinarily lucky escape!