Wednesday 14th May

A bit breezier during the day today, but still bright, dry and sunny.

The day started off with interesting non-avian records of first arrivals of Painted Lady butterflies and continued during the day at various locations across Islay. The first records were followed swiftly by a sighting of a distinctly uncommon species for Islay - a Magpie seen by Mary R. down at Portnahaven - Jim Dickson commenting that there has been a bit of a recent influx into areas of Argyll where they are less usual.

A little later Steve & Julia Garnier located the Snow Goose, still on Loch Gorm with a bunch of Greylags. I popped down to Easter Ellister to check out the scoter sightings of yesterday, finding a drake Common and drake Velvet Scoter on the loch, but no sign of the female.

Martin Harris, visiting for a few days noted 10 Choughs at Machir Bay and a further 12 at Sanaigmore, plus 6 Arctic Terns off Port Mhor.

David D. upped the non-avian sightings at lunch-time with a record of Narrow-bordered Bee Hawk-Moth on The Oa. Later still he and Hannah Stanger very much upped the day's bird sightings with a fantastic find of a male Woodchat Shrike at Upper Cragabus. This is only the 3rd Argyll record, the first was a juvenile at Kilnaughton Bay, Port Ellen on 16 September 1996 and the second was in May 2013 on Tiree.