Saturday 11th, Sunday 12th & Monday 13th January

The weather has changed back from cold, with crisp, fairly calm and sunny days, to fairly mild, damp and rainy with a bit more breeze.

Regardless of what the weather was doing, very few of us were out looking at birds. Mary Redman reported 4 Snipe at Claddach on Saturday. Clive McK. was at the top of Loch Indaal doing a WeBS count on a very rainy Sunday. He counted 26 Brent Geese and 12 Long-tailed Ducks near Blackrock where a couple of White-tailed Eagles dropped in and perched up.

Today David Jardine was on the ferry to Islay and scored 2 Little Auks SE of Texa (there were no records of Little auk for Islay last year). Later, at Bowmore he found a female Scaup and then 5 Goosanders on Loch Skerrols - there have only been 3 other records involving that many together on Islay. As I write this David has posted a photo of an even rarer bird - a Stock Dove with a flock of Wood Pigeons at Sunderland Farm (spot it in the photo below). There are just 12 accepted records for Islay from 1977 to 2022, with all but two birds seen since 2002. All records have been on the Rhinns or The Oa, nine of these being single birds, with groups of four and five seen at Sanaigmore in March 2015 and 2016. There are four records from February-March, two in June and five in September-October, plus an undated record from the 2007/08 to 2010/11 Winter Atlas.