Thursday 30th December

A few extra records from yesterday showing that at least one resident birder went out in that awful weather: Mark Shields had 4 Bullfinches and 2 White-tailed Eagles at Loch Gruinart and a Dipper on the River Sorn at Bridgend.

Today’s weather was kinder - mild with light winds, cloudy but mostly dry.

Ian Dearing checked Loch Skerrols and found the first-winter male Lesser Scaup along with 13 Tufted Duck, 28 Teal, 4 Wigeon and a Woodcock. In the afternoon he found a White-tailed Eagle over Kilchiaran Bay.

At Cornabus Ed Burrell had a partially albino Blackbird, sporting a totally white rump.

Phil Edwards was out and about over the island and sent in this report: “Spent an hour at South Hide at RSPB Gruinart and had a ringtail Hen Harrier hunting three times across the pools.  2 Whooper Swans, 93 Pintail; at least 40 Shoveler (the harrier flushed everything part-way through the count!), 600+ Golden Plover, 1 Little Egret.

Then 45 minutes at Blackrock where I managed 17 Long-tailed Duck (13m 4f), 8 Common Scoter (6m 2f), 11 Slavonian Grebes, 2 Red-throated Divers, 2 Great Northern Divers, 6 Eider (3m 3f) and a single female Greater Scaup (I remember rafts of 600 in the 1980s).

Then across the centre of the island (no eagles, no Peregrines, no Black Grouse (are the latter even still on the island?).  At Bunnahabhain, I managed to see 2 Great Northern Divers and 4 Black Guillemots plus a pair of Sparrowhawks (1m 1f) flying over the woods there, fighting.

I stopped off at Loch Skerrols to try for a photo of the female Lesser Scaup but it wasn’t present – just the 1CY male with 20 Tufties all on the far side of the loch.More tomorrow – hopefully "

I believe that Phil's count of Pintail and Long-tailed Ducks are both quite high. His comment about Greater Scaup is sadly true - I wonder if we'll see any counts in even double figures this year, let alone the hundreds that used to occur. I saw a lone Black Grouse on Islay in my first spring living here in 2000 and don't recall that any others have been seen since - so it is quite likely a species that no longer occurs on Islay?

(Peter Roberts)