A colder, blustery day today with rain showers, sometimes quite heavy for much of the day, though brighter in the afternoon. Moderate to strong northerly winds caused a bit of ferry disruption - but no more than operational difficulties on the ferries from the loss of ship's crew due to Covid .
Polly Mather noted a gathering of 4 White-tailed Eagles at the top of Loch Indaal this morning and Mark Shields reports a "small" Canada Goose at Lyrabus and a total of 123 Curlew at Loch Gruinart.
STOP PRESS:
A bit more bird and wildlife news for today from Phil Edwards:
"Well today is officially our last day (but with the ferry cancellations due to Covid and weather we may well still be here tomorrow) and Islay produced one of those golden days. We started with an imm White-tailed Eagle from the cottage window at Smaull, followed by 2 Chough, a Rock Dove and c. 500 Barnacle Geese. A female Merlin was near the road north of Sunderland Farm on our way to northern Loch Indaal to search for the elusive Iceland Gull. Never did run into it. We had 36 Eider (23m 13f) off of Traigh an Luig plus 12 Red-breasted Merganser, 1 Red-throated Diver, 1 Great Northern Diver and c. 20 Turnstones. Then at Bruichladdich birding went out of the window as we spent over an hour with two delightful Otters playing in the water and on the rocks and feeding on several fish. When they left (1,500 photos later (3 fairly nice ones attached)) swimming out into the loch, a third came by but briefly; and then we had 2 Purple Sandpipers, a Turnstone and four Ringed Plovers on the rocks (photo) and 2 Rock Pipits. Onto Blackrock, still looking for the elusive gull, there were 3m & 1 f Common Scoter, 1m Long-tailed Duck, 1 Guillemot, 1 Red-throated Diver, 1 Great Northern Diver and many Red-breasted Merganser. At Traigh Cill an Rubha I made a full count – 28 pale-bellied Brents, 24 Shelduck, 186 Teal, 182 Wigeon, 87 Mallard, 22 Oystercatcher, 6 Ringed Plover, 91 Lapwing, 54 Curlew, 4 Bar-tailed Godwits, 12 Dunlin, 101 Common Gull, 21 Black-headed Gull, and 1 Herring Gull. Giving up on the Iceland gull, we headed to Loch Skerrols in an abortive attempt at the female American wigeon – but the only ducks present were 14 Tufted … and 2m &1f Lesser Scaup.
May I say thanks to all at the blog – it’s been really helpful on this visit. We’ll try not to leave it another 16 years before we come back."
Many Thanks to Phil for his wonderful photos (the last of which are shown below) and masses of bird records over his stay on Islay. While he has been on Islay he has been delighted to have his first book published. Congratulations. It is titled "At The Very End Of The Road" and may be of interest to those of us who enjoy nature-writing. It is published by the Scottish publisher Whittles Publishing. An excerpt can be found at https://booksfromscotland.com/
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