Grey, misty days at the flash

We're rapidly leaving autumn behind us and moving into winter as evidenced by the arrival of goldeneye at the flash, as well as pochard and goosander. The gull roost is rapidly building and will soon no doubt lure me back to Green Lane in the late afternoon. 

The weather has been largely dull, misty, murky and drizzly, with the occasional bright sunny day interspersed.  Long dark nights are imminent with Halloween and bonfire night swiftly following. I like this time of year though.

Garganey, Cutacre

A juvenile female garganey on Swan Lake at Cutacre CP was my latest ever in the UK by three weeks and only my third ever in October.

Egyptian geese at Pennington Flash

From the sublime to the ridiculous, last week I'm watching Swainson's thrush and hoping for another vireo or a White's thrush on a Outer Hebridean island, this week I'm making the case for the Egyptian goose. Oh well, such is life in land locked Greater Manchester.

For the past five or six years a small number of Egyptian geese have spent the summer at Pennington Flash.  Occasionally they are accompanied by a juvenile or two. Usually they are gone by the end of September. 

Earlier this year just one bird spent September at the flash and I thought it was probably a sign that this small group was coming to an end. 

However, last Thursday a family party of two adults and two juveniles appeared, all unringed and all wary, at least so far! I have seen them once on the car park early morning, but they won't allow close approach and by mid morning they go elsewhere. Most of the time they are either at the boat club or on the flooded horse field between Mossley Hall farm and Slag lane. 

Obviously they've not flown here from Egypt, but it would be interesting to know where these birds have bred. Apparently there is currently no known breeding within Greater Manchester and the core breeding areas are East Anglia, South London and the East Midlands, the latter probably as close as 80 miles as the goose flies. However there may also be other much closer places where the species breeds, and perhaps there are sites within Greater Manchester which are not presently known. Whatever the answer, these particular birds are probably as good as it gets for a local tick!

Journey across the Sea of the Hebrides

I love a good ferry journey across the Minch or in today's case the Sea of the Hebrides. Today we saw about 30 common dolphins in three groups and I also had brief views of a couple of minke whales. It was very quiet for birds, but I did manage two species of skua, great and a distant pale phase bird that was almost certainly pomarine. Other than that it was mainly just gannets and a few kittiwakes, plus a handful of fulmars and auks.

The last couple of days on Barra - bringing up 100 species

The weather for the past couple of days has been challenging with strong winds and heavy squally showers. Even so we've managed to see lots of great birds and had some wonderful experiences. For example, at Allasdale today we came across a flock of around 200 barnacle geese on the short grass. These geese are newly arrived from Greenland and are resting up before they continue their journey to other parts of the Hebrides, most likely Islay.

Suddenly the flock took to the air as a magnificent white-tailed eagle flew in and tried to take them by surprise. These eagles are well capable of taking a barnacle goose in flight and the flock flew back and forth for 10 minutes as the eagle flew around before heading off empty handed. A different eagle was also seen trying to take a glossy ibis up at Eoligarry two days ago, but not by us! Yesterday we saw a golden eagle on Vatersay, the only one of the holiday for us this year.

Glossy ibis still and another common rosefinch

The glossy ibis at Eoligarry are remarkable birds, they'll stand at the side of the road and allow you to drive right up to them, sometimes as close as 5m away. Even my bright red car doesn't spook them!

In recent days they've changed their behaviour somewhat, and now no longer spend all of their time on the flood. These days you're just as likely to find them in a boggy field or in with a flock of sheep.

Squally, blustery winds and murky mizzle

A difficult day on Barra due to a strong, blustery wind and sometimes heavy drizzle, but we still managed more views of Arctic warbler and Swainson's thrush and found a yellow-browed warbler. Supporting cast included long-tailed ducks, nine glossy ibis, three species of diver plus sooty and Manx shearwaters. 51 brents were on Traigh Mhor and others moving south.

Another Yank passerine on Barra

Another great day birding on Barra as yet another Yank was found in the shape of a Swainson's thrush at Castlebay, now renamed Central Park by the locals. Unfortunately for us this was not even an island tick as we saw one here last year as well, though that was in the hand having been caught and ringed, so it was great to see one walking around in the leaf litter in the woods near the football pitch. This is the 9th North American passerine on the island in the past 5 weeks, of four different species (Philadelphia vireo x 1, Tennessee warbler x 2, red-eyed vireo x5 & Swainson's thrush x1). What else is waiting out there for us, and will we find it?

 
Also today, common rosefinch at Glen, 9 glossy ibis still, 3 drake green-winged teal, juvenile ring-necked duck, a large passage of whooper swans and barnacle geese over the island, a late swallow and our first moorhen on the island! Not seen by us today, the Arctic warbler is still around as well. Not a bad day.

 

The mystery of the green-winged teal at Eoligarry flood

Yesterday a drake green-winged teal was found at Eoligarry, on the flood created by heavy rain over the past two days. It apparently arrived as part of an influx of about 10 teal, more than we had previously seen at Eoligarry. We had a quick look at the bird in fading light yesterday evening and saw that it had quite dull vertical white stripes, which we put down to either the poor evening light or the fact that the bird was perhaps not yet in full plumage having just moulted out of eclipse. 

On returning for another look this morning, we were surprised to see that it actually now had two quite bright vertical white stripes. While we were watching, it disappeared into the vegetation and less than a minute later we spotted a green-winged teal some 50m to the right on the edge of the pool, without us seeing it fly or swim there across open water. Surely that couldn't be the same bird? Where there two green-winged teal present?

Then Ray pointed out another bird which was still moulting, with plenty of brown feathers in amongst the fresh grey flanks, but with a white mark on both sides at the top of where the white vertical bar should be. The rest of the bar was obscured by brown feathers. Was this another drake green-winged teal and if so just how many were there? One thing for sure, there was at least one certain drake Eurasian teal in the group.

The viewing conditions were difficult, the teal were at a distance of about 100m, in and out of the flooded vegetation, it was very windy, misty and dull with some heavy drizzly showers which soaked the optics. Also the birds were just coming out of moult, so it was difficult to be certain if the markings we were seeing, or not seeing, were real or just aberrations of moult. In the end we decided that we could only be certain that there was one bird present because we didn't see the dull and bright birds together.

However, the following day we received a message on the Barra birders WhatsApp group that there were two, probably three green-winged teal on the flood. We decided to head back later for another look, but unfortunately the teal were flushed by a buzzard and flew south before we arrived and were not seen again. Over the next few days the flood subsided to more normal marshy field levels and we had no further sightings of any teal.

I had taken several videos of the teal on my phone and through the telescope, all of which are shaky and of poor quality and don't really prove anything, especially since I had been following around the well marked bird rather than trying to find other birds. 

Most intriguing to me is how many of the females were green-winged teal? The identification of females is very difficult at the best of times and probably impossible in the kind of conditions that we had to contend with here.

However, even before the possibility of there being more than one drake was raised, I had noticed in the field that some of the females looked darker than I would normally expect and some had a well-marked  head pattern of dark crown, pale supercilium and dark eye-stripe. This is a feature, though not conclusive, of female green-winged teal as described by Hugh Harrop in a short paper in British Birds 112, January 2019: 35-43(opens in a new window). 

Apparently the key feature to look out for when attempting to identify female green-winged teal is the pattern on the outermost tertial, something which I was not aware of at the time and which try as I might, I can't see in my videos. 

An amazing day in the mist and drizzle on Barra

Arctic warbler, photo ©Bruce Taylor.

An amazing day birding on Barra today, in some of the worst weather we've experienced so far, dull, foggy, often heavy drizzle, yet the birds kept giving! 

Best bird for me was a new bird in the form of an Arctic warbler, but other highlights included finding only the 5th Barra autumn record of osprey, 9 glossy ibis, drake green-winged teal, juvenile ring-necked duck, a fabulous jack snipe, newly arrived whooper swans, a large movement of barnacle geese and a Barra rarity, a treecreeper. I also heard a yellow-browed warbler.

This arctic warbler was found just down the road from our cottage at Ardmor plantation. It proved elusive at first but eventually showed really well.

Winter visitors arrive on a grey day

The weather has turned distinctly wet and misty over the past couple of days and the wind has eased slightly and now has a more easterly element to it. This change off weather appears to have opened the floodgates to allow the arrival of many winter birds. 

First off today though, we saw the arrival of the first skeins of barnacle geese from the west, as 31 dropped onto Traigh Mhor and then later 90 were over Northbay. 

Glossy Ibis and ring-necked duck, Barra

We were watching a juvenile ring-necked duck on Loch an Ail in the north of the island when we got news from the local WhatsApp birders group that a flock of 9 glossy ibis had been seen flying north along the coast near Brevig, heading in our direction. Sure enough 10 minutes later they appeared over the hills behind the loch before disappearing north into the mist. We spent the next hour trying to relocate them.

The ring-necked duck was just as worthy of our attention though and should not be lightly dismissed. A juvenile on the Outer Hebrides in autumn, feeding actively, is surely as good as it gets for a new arrival from North America, especially in the days following an unprecedented fall of North American passerines. I can't think of any ring-necked duck I've seen with better wild credentials than this bird.

Before the storm

With heavy rain and strong winds forecast from mid-morning and then for most of the day, I decided to head out at first light to try to get at least some birding in today. I started out at Eoligarry church and had the shock of my life when I saw probably the yellowest willow warbler I have ever seen! Following recent events here and given that there was an American yellow warbler on Tiree as recently as two days ago, it was certainly a heart stopping moment.

Still there was no sign of the rain and the winds were no worse than moderate so I drove to Eoligarry jetty, parked up and set off down the beach towards the wader roost at Scurrival beach. As I walked I nonchalantly day ticked the two white-tailed eagles on the corpse on the other side of the water, on a beach on Funday island, which we have seen every day since we arrived.

Wheatear in a creel and ring ouzel at Glen

This juvenile wheatear was trapped in a lobster pot at Eoligarry jetty today, but fortunately it didn't seem to have been in too long and we were able to release it unharmed. Apparently many small birds get trapped in creels like this and most probably die. I didn't realise that this happened but from now on I'll be keeping my eyes open for any more birds such this.

Iceland gull, scaup and Pied flycatcher, Barra

This 2nd calendar year Iceland gull has been hanging around Barra golf course recently and is very photogenic.

As you can see here!

Eoligarry

Eoligarry in the north is my favourite part of Barra and today was our first opportunity to visit the area. I just find the views breathtaking everytime I see them.

Pale-bellied brent geese.

 

Red-eyed vireo, Castlebay, Barra

Around 10 days ago Barra experienced an unprecedented fall of North American passerines, with eight individuals present, of three different species. Philadelphia vireo, two Tennessee warblers and five red-eyed vireos! 

For those of us who were imminently about to visit the island for a two week birding holiday this was a difficult time because it happened just a little too early. If it had happened a couple of days before we were due to travel we might have hoped that surely something will stay until we arrive, but 10 days is asking a lot. 

However, a single red-eyed vireo stuck it out in the woods around the football pitch at Castlebay and today showed exceptionally well in good light.

I don't have a great record with North American passerines and this was a UK tick for me. Later in the day the Philadelphia vireo was seen again on a couple of occasions in the same area, but we failed to connect with it. Hopefully one for tomorrow.