Friday 21st October

Today was another busy day on the birding front. To kick things off, here is Malcolm's account of his morning drive: 

"I drove the Glen Road from Ballygrant to Bridgend this morning and every berried hawthorn and rowan in the roadside trees and hedges seemed to have Fieldfares and Redwings in them. No count but certainly hundreds of each.  A single adult Pink-footed Goose was among c.5000 Barnacles on the sand at Bridgend. It wasn’t paired to a Barnacle as far as I could tell, though this can happen. An immature or adult female Merlin did some high-speed hedge-hopping near Mulindry."

Neil McMahon and Steve Rogers both visited The Oa reserve where they both saw twite on the car-park feeders, and (presumably the same) carrion crow. Neil and Steve also spotted a woodcock and male HH, respectively.  

Neil then headed to Kildalton where he found around 1000 redwing, and then to Ballygrant where he saw two hen harriers, a merlin and a peregrine. He rounded off his day's birding by watching 16 whoopers from the beach at Port Ellen.

Staying on the south side of the island, Kate Coombes reports two chough and a WTE at Kilnaughton, and David Dinsley reports a jack snipe at Lower Killeyan.

Judith Hooper was treated to a close-up flyby from a WTE at Kilchoman, where she also reported 1 twite, 30 curlew, 4 whoopers, a reed bunting, a snipe and two stonechat. 

Jackie and Dave Wedd saw potentially the same WTE while driving between Loch Gorm and Gruinart, before heading to Ardnave, where they saw two little grebe and a family of six whoopers on the loch, 40 twite, and a red-throated diver and razorbill from the Point.

To round off today's blog, Elaine and Eddie sent in a lovely highlight reel of their holiday to Islay:

"No rarities for us this time, but highlights of the trip included a WTE spectacularly lifting a huge fish from the surface of the sea at Ardnave, watched by 5 snow buntings, and an otter on the rocks outside Bruichladdich distillery gates, feeding on the incoming tide and ignoring the waves crashing down over it. Our early morning drives from Bruichladdich to Gruinart in the dark saw steadily increasing numbers of redwings, chased down the road on one occasion by a sparrowhawk with night vision, and on another by a pair of stoats."

Thank you all for your reports today!