Thursday 11th June

Been another great day out here today... Last night, or rather earlier on this morning, we carried out the Corncrake survey on our patch. When we left the house, the temperature was only 7 degrees, but with no wind, so the sea was quite quiet, and so hopefully allowing us to hear all around. The only problem was that we only heard 4 calling males in total, we would normally have expected to hear 10 plus ... I was speaking to Bob and he had only heard 7, less than half that he had at the first round a few weeks back. The temperature later on was down to only 5 degrees, so possibly the birds do not like the cold.... neither do we!!! We also heard Greylags, a Sedge Warbler but we never saw any Owls, or any Hedgehogs... Peter had done the patch down below Port Charlotte round Portnahaven and apart from some Corncrakes, he had heard a Grasshopper Warbler and seen a couple of Barn Owls and a Tawny Owl while he was out. Mary had a pair of Redshank taking their brood of young down off the moor towards the estuary at Gruinart. There were a couple of female Eiders with a small number of ducklings on Loch Indaal as we came out of Bowmore this morning. The Rochdale birders had seen a Golden Eagle and also a Sparrowhawk on their way round the Rhinns yesterday.