A day of fairly blustery NW winds, rain showers and intermittent cloud and odd sunny spells, all caused by something called Hurricane Nigel. While "Nigel" is causing some horrible weather, it is also causing an extraordinary run of rare American vagrants, which prompted foolhardy locals (aka Me) to go looking for some. I went to Frenchman's Rocks for an hour and half of humiliation this morning, dodging rain and wind and seeing almost nothing - even the "common" species were in short supply. The most exciting aspect of the whole debacle was seeing a paltry few Manx Shearwaters flying in the opposite direction to that which they normally do. This afternoon I went way up to Gortantoid to check out the isolated scrubby bit of woodland cover there: as good a place as any for an American warbler or similar to pitch down in. I saw three Chaffinches! In all fairness, there were a lot of migrant Meadow Pipits, White Wagtails and Skylarks, plus 8 Wheatears, but nothing to get the heart racing. While there the news came through of a Baltimore Oriole on Rathlin.................
Apart from my sorry tales, Mary Redman had counted 13 Chough down at Port Wemyss yesterday and a group of 7 Snipe at Octofad and a White-tailed Eagle at the top of loch Indaal this morning. Up at Gruinart, James How had the first group of Whooper Swans (17 of them) come in to the Flats (not there this afternoon), plus 3 Ruff from the South Hide.
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Not sure how of interest this is but a walk south from Bowmore along Indaal today (Sat 23 Sept) yielded oystercatcher, turnstone, curlew, ringed plover, knot, black tailed godwit, red breasted merganser, great crested grebe, greylag geese, grey heron, wheatear, meadow pipit, woodcock, stonechat, goldfinch, linnet, twite, black headed gull, herring gull, grey wagtail, pied wagtail, white wagtail, buzzard, starling. Also plenty of common seal laying up. I think that was about it.
Loch Gruinart this morning (Sunday 24th).
Male hen harrier, two peregrine. Lots of greylag, wigeon, curlew, lapwing, meadow pipit, most corvids, mute swan, redshank, ruff, snipe, goldcrest, bullfinch and coal tit in the woods. Roe deer. Sure I’ve forgotten some stuff.
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