Another day on South Uist

We'd always planned to make a couple of trips to South Uist and after nearly two weeks of birding the same locations on Barra we decided that it was time for a change of scenery. Not that South Uist or any where on the Western Isles has been faring much better than Barra when it comes to rarities this autumn, in fact at the time of writing Barra has had the only mega on these isles in the shape of the Swainson's thrush, but a change is as good as a rest as they say. 

We headed first for Boisdale where there had been a juvenile American golden plover present for a couple of days. At first it was impossible, with the sun in completely the wrong position and too bright for us to have any hope picking out a grey looking golden plover, but eventually a combination of the Earth revolving slightly over time, some perfectly positioned cloud and a repositioning of the car allowed us to get some decent views, though not great photos. It's the front right bird in this photo.

Photo © John Kemp

or you can just admire John Kemp's photo also from today.

One of the great things about birding Barra in autumn is that even if the North American and Siberian passerines fail you, there's still plenty of decent birding to be had, such as this white-tailed eagle, one of two over the ferry as we left Eriskay. That's at least four white-tailed eagles and seven golden eagles so far on this trip.

Birds seen from the 40 minute ferry journey included Slavonian grebe, two great northern divers and several red-throated divers.

Also a few kittiwakes and gannets.

Five whooper swans were on Loch Bee.

Black-tailed godwits at Bornish, South Uist. Also here there were impressive flocks of 100+ twite and 300+ rock doves.

The mountains of South Uist from Rubha Ardvule.

Raven, the only corvid we have seen on this trip other than hooded crow.