Wednesday 5th April

 A pleasant mild spring day - drizzly to start with, but dry and moderately sunny later with light winds from the south and west. 

There is a little bit more detail about the Irish WT Eagle that overflew Islay recently, kindly provided by Tom Lowe.Apparently it came by on 23rd March, was on Rathlin at about 12.30pm, an hour later was over Port Ellen and an hour after that was over Loch Gruinart. It was flying at various elevations from 97 - 126 metres up at speeds varying from 25 - 70 kph. It doesn't sound as if it stopped here long?

Today David Wood had 3 Willow Warblers, a Goldcrest and a Redwing at Risabus on the Oa. 

As the sea was calm, I took a look over Loch Indaal from Port Charlotte up to Bruichladdich. The place was very busy with all sorts of feeding seabirds. Amongst the odd Black Guillemot, Gannet, gulls including quite a few Kittiwakes, Eiders and RB Mergansers were a total of c.60 Red-throated and 10 Great Northern Divers, over 100 Razorbill in tight feeding groups of 10 -20 spread across the loch, and 2-3 small, active flocks of Common Scoter totalling 42 birds. Far over the other side were many small black, white and black-and-white dots of birds that were too far to identify, but presumably more of the same: it would be fascinating to know what the actual number of all these species was................... 

Calling, fishing and perching on the rocks around Bruichladdich were 8 Sandwich Terns.