Yet another almost entirely foul day's weather - rain, cloud and mainly miserable with a few short dry spells to give you hope. The one difference being that the driving rain came from a more easterly direction today.
Phil Edwards sums it up:
"Well just when you thought the weather couldn’t possibly get any worse … but as you say, when on holiday needs must. So the forecast showed the east coast to be the most sheltered today so we headed for Bunnahabhain via the centre of the island, but pickings were predictably thin. A male Hen Harrier, a Grey Heron, and a Sparrowhawk were around Gruinart Flats. When you could see more than 50m from the shore at Uiskentuie, a male Goldeneye was the only bird visible on Loch Indaal. The Storakaig road produced a flock of c. 120 Rooks and c. 70 Jackdaws in a field near Cluanach, a flock of 150+ Chaffinches in a stubble field (the largest flock I have seen on Islay since c.700 at Coullabus on New Year’s Eve 1984), and a male Hen Harrier over the moorland. Bunnahabhain was indeed sheltered but went from sunny with nice views of the Paps to zero visibility and hail to back again at least twice within an hour. Two Black Guillemots and two GNDs were the pick of a limited crop"
The post-Christmas desire for exercise got me out on a fairly fruitless mission to Cornabus, The Oa and Port Ellen. On the way, the standard adult White-tailed Eagle was seen sat out damp and forlorn on the little islands at the top of loch Indaal. At Port Ellen we met with visiting birder Calum Scott and saw an immature Glaucous Gull in a large flock of gulls in the bay by the Port Ellen distillery, which Calum had seen previously at Claggain Bay. This was a different bird to the currently resident bird at Uiskentuie.
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