Thursday 23rd October

An early entry tonight for you folks as I am out with friends tonight and I want to write this entry NOW!!!The weather today not so good, the poor folk that are over this week have not seen Islay at its' best, perhaps the Distilleries will be the winners this week, all the same the bird entries are still coming through for the blog! Steve Percival along with his father Albert saw a Lesser Scaup up at Ardnave this morning. Bob, today had a Swallow over at Ballinaby, back home behind Port Charlotte, he had 10 Mistle Thrush together back on Monday. He also has seen 3 different Kestrels at different locations lately. The East Anglian birders had a White tailed Sea Eagle being mobbed by 2 Buzzards up above the airport where they also saw a Peregrine, all yesterday. Dave Protherough had a count of 75 Barwits, 25 Pale bellied Brents, 50 Wigeon and 8 RB Merganser at Gartmain, along at the Power generating station there were 10 Mute and 8 Whoopers. Later on he saw an Otter down at the Maltingsv and also 8 Whoopers flying up "Cornabus valley". The Horwich birders yesterday had been in the Ballygrant woods where they had a flock of Long tailed Tit, Great Tit with some Goldcrest. On Ballygrant Loch they saw 5 Mute Swans along with 2 adult Whoopers and their one youngster. On Loch nan Cadhan there was a Dabchick and a solitary Mute Swan. They also counted a total of 42 Whoopers on the pools below Rockside, there had been 32 up in Minister's field earlier on. Bob counted 15 in the field beside his house today. The Horwich birders had a Brambling on the seed at their cottage along with 15 Chaffinches and a Goldfinch this morning.