Sunday 18th October

Just realised that I forgot to write an entry last night.. oops, just another senior moment you might well say!!! The Bowland birders head home yesterday and had a grand total of 97 species seen during their week, so thanks to Andy and Jane as well as other visitors who kindly shared some of their sightings with us. Steve from Co. Durham had a Todd's Canada Goose amongst the Barnies at Sunderland this morning, later on Steve saw the American Wigeon amongst the Wigeon up on Ardnave Loch. This morning Bob, Gary and myself carried out the WeBS count from Bowmore down to Gartmain, what a great day to do it with the water on Loch Indaal being flat calm. Going down to meet the others at Bowmore the sunrise was something else and the sight of the geese heading out was great to see... So here are our birds, 2 Heron, 2 GND, 9 Pale bellied Brent, 11 Shag, 2 Cormorant, 20 Greylag, 495 Barnies, 7 Greenland Whitefronts, 57 Teal, 16 RB Merganser, 41 Oystercatcher, 55 Curlew, 9 Redshank, 8 Turnstone, 2 Snipe, 6 Grey Plover, 209 Golden Plover, a Ringed Plover heard, 2 Lapwing, 3 GBB Gull, 90 H Gull, 10 C Gull and 10 BH Gull. There were 70 Common Scoter seen further out on Loch Indaal, but not deemed to be on our patch!!! There appear to be more Redwings and Fieldfares around today, there were a small group of 10 Fieldfare as went down the lane to the edge of the loch, and Bob had 60 drop in to the Water works opposite his house as he returned home. Wally and Jude had been over the East coast and between Coal Ila and on the road up towards Bunnahabhain they had a pair of Whitetailed eagle, a pair of Golden eagles and also a pair of Kestrel. They too had noticed and seen more Fieldfare and Redwing around today. I had 10 Redwing fly past down at the coal yard this morning and back at home, at lunchtime, 6 Whoopers flew from Loch Gorm out to the sea and then flew South onto Ireland, a Goldcrest was present in the trees down where we used to live this afternoon! This evening, to finish off a great day, the International Space station was seen, no doubt it will be back shortly, as it orbits the world every 90 minutes, or another way to think of it is that the crew see 16 sunrise and sunsets every 24 hours.....