At last - a lovely warm, sunny and spring-like day. Unsurprisingly, this produced the first of the summer migrants. Clive McK. had a Wheatear at Ardnave with Harry and Denise Failey finding another on The Oa, where they also noted 3 Golden Eagles (2 adults and an immature). Later, near the road down to The Machrie Hotel they found a/the Magpie. Down at Claddach, Mary R. found our first Sand Martin, plus a couple of White-tailed Eagles perched up at Claddach Loch plus 2 Lesser Black-backed Gulls. David D. had a White Wagtail at Kinnabus where he also noted the Long-tailed Duck still on loch Kinnabus and a lone Pink-footed Goose. Steven Murray was the only one reporting from Gruinart today where he saw a Golden Eagle from the South Hide. In the fine weather the Black Guillemots were much in evidence at their usual haunts of Port Askaig and Bruichladdich Pier.
I stopped off at Blackrock in the afternoon sunshine to look over the calm waters of Loch Indaal. Nicholas Watts had previously seen 6 Brent Geese here, and I added 83 Common Scoters, 41 Red-breasted Mergansers, 4 Long-tailed Ducks, 6 Slavonian Grebes, 14 Red-throated and 11 Great Northern Divers. (Coincidentally, David Jardine was counting just across the water at the Sound of Gigha and added a further 172 Common Scoters, 22 Long-tailed Ducks and 27 Slavonian Grebes, and suggested that the combined total probably represents a substantial proportion of the Argyll total for these species).
Clive McK. sent in a note about finding a total of 6 Great northern Divers washed up dead on the big Strand (Laggan Bay) earlier in the week. It is a v ery long beach, so may mean nothing, but always sad to see and worrying that it might be a few of a much larger number that have died due to bad weather, disease or who knows what?
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