Another lovely, mostly dry, sunny day with light westerly winds. But much of the bird news reflects impending winter.
James How set the ball rolling with a report of the first 3 Barnacle Geese of the winter arriving at Gruinart along with 4 Pink-footed Geese this morning. At lunch-time David Wood reported a flock of 30 Pink-footed Geese flying eastwards on The Oa, followed not that long afterwards by another 60. Discussion ensued about the various favourable weather conditions in the North Atlantic making the arrival of our winter geese so much earlier than usual.
In the afternoon, Val Peacock and Lesley Silcock did a walk from Saligo to Sanaigmore seeing a few more Pink-footed Geese flying over, plus 30 Chough near Saligo and a pair of Golden Eagles, When I went to pick them up I met a Swiss birder who says he saw a flock of 50-60 Barnacle Geese at Gruinart yesterday.
With nothing better to do on my return home I took a look at Loch Gorm and counted the Greylag Geese there. 1,410 were evident with folks around the island saying they had other large numbers elsewhere at the same time: 440 at Cornabus for starters, so one heck of a lot of them about and comparable to Jim Dickson's count last week of 1,510 at Bridgend and others elsewhere.
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