A further day of grisly weather on Sunday was followed by a fairly pleasant day of calm, bright, dry and sunny, if cold, weather on Monday inspiring a few birders to get out and find something to pop onto tonight's blog!
In fact I was inspired by Val Peacock to venture out to the South Hide at Gruinart by 7am to experience the pre-dawn sounds and watch the sun come up and the birds start their day. It was cold and I came away glad that I wasn't a bird having to sit out there all night. It was also surprisingly noisy, with the Barnacle Geese never seeming to take a rest - at least not all together at the same time. As dawn came we could see 14 Whooper Swans and a Little Egret on the floods with quite a lot of Barnacle Geese scattered there feeding before they went off to better feeding areas with the daylight. The first raptors on the scene as light came were 2-3 Buzzards, with a White-tailed Eagle following later.
Gary Turnbull was out this morning around Finlaggan and Ballygrant. He found a party of 8 Bullfinches at Achnaclach Woods plus a single Brambling with Chaffinches then two more Bramblings with about 100 Chaffinches at a cattle-feeding point on the Mulreesh road near Finlaggan. On the loch itself were 17 Mallard, 33 Teal and 20 Tufted Ducks. He also clocked 3 different Golden Eagles up that way.
With such calm conditions, I took a quick look on loch Indaal from Blackrock this afternoon, but the light was already fading. However, there were 36 Brent Geese on the shoreline and out in the loch 10 Great Northern Divers, and 107 Common Scoter. Further up the loch I could see a couple of adult White-tailed Eagles sat on their favourite little island. Up near Uikentuie the foreshore held a mixed flock of c.45 Dunlin and 35 Ringed Plovers with 5-10 Turnstone. All along the upper shoreline were Chaffinches - 150+ feeding on weed seeds.
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