Tuesday 5th November

Yesterday for Colin Bushell along with his birders who have been over for the past few days, it was their final day. Up at Bunnahabhain, they saw a Golden Eagle and also had a count of 12 Lesser Redpolls there. Down at Ballygrant, they had 25 Fieldfares and also a Mistle Thrush present.. Loch Skerrols had 13 Mute Swan, 23 Whoopers, 57 Wigeon and also 24 Teal. At Loch Gruinart, they saw a Todd's Canada Goose, 8 Whoopers, the drake Green winged Teal was present out from the North Hide. Out over the flats they had seen 2 W t Eagles and also a Golden  Eagle with 34 Sanderling seen up on the East side of Loch Gruinart itself.

MB yesterday had counted 38 Ringed Plover and also 46 Curlew down on Machir Bay. Over at Whin park/the merse at Bridgend, he had seen 2 White tailed Eagles . 9 Shelduck, 72 Knot, 2 Grey Plover, 104 Ringed Plover, 23 Dunlin, 14 Barwits and also 31 P b Brents were present there as well. Down towards Kilchiaran, he saw an adult Golden Eagle and then shortly afterwards, he had a male Hen Harrier seen close to Tormisdale. A walk along beside Claddach, proved quite productive... He watched a flock of Barnies being spoofed by something and then he watched a W t Eagle take a Barnie out in mid flight, but the Barnie managed to break out of the eagle's grip and escape....The Eagle was not too pleased about that.. He also saw a Sparrowhawk , 6 Ringed Plover, 8 Curlew, 6 Redshank, 3 Turnstone, 191 Whitefronts, 24 Shag, 5 Cormorant and also 39 Hooded Crows. He also counted 141 adult Grey Seals along with 9 Pups . Another species of interest, was the sighting of a "Blond" Hedgehog...

Also yesterday, James had a Water Rail while walking through the Woodland Trail at Gruinart.

This afternoon, Malcolm had seen 110 Shag in a feeding frenzy out on Loch Indaal from his house. There were solely Shags seen with no gulls present, with the whole event taking around 20 minutes with Shags flying away in small groups rather than in in one large groups. Earlier on this week, I had been coming up from Port Charlotte  and I had seen Shags perched up on the rocks just North of Bruichladdich and thought that there was a large number of Shags present, "standing room only"