A glorious sunny day with light winds... errr no. The weather forecast was
wrong! It certainly started glorious, but it rapidly deteriorated to low
cloud and drizzle.
A decent days birding though, we finally caught up with a barred warbler at
Nask and the yellow-browed warbler bonanza continues, we saw five of the 14
on the island today, and were lucky enough to be present when two were
trapped and ringed at Creachan. Also today, the start of the barnacle goose passage over
the island, with 21 over Eoligarry.
Weighing less than a wren, yellow-browed warblers are tiny birds that breed
not much closer than China, yet turn up in the UK in increasing numbers every
year.
When we were here two years ago a North American Swainson's
thrush was caught in Creachan wood and before that it produced Barra's only White's thrush, plus lots of
other good stuff. Still, you can't see too many yellow-browed warblers,
fabulous birds.
Yellow-browed in a net. Once entangled the birds tend to just resign
themselves to the fact that they are caught. The ringer can untangle them
easily and gently, measure and weigh the bird, put a small ring on it's leg
and release it unharmed.
We got to this net before the ringer and it was Ray who spotted it first. We
kept our distance while we waited for the ringer to empty another net and then
suddenly noticed that there was a second yellow-browed higher up!
They were quite close together so I can only assume that one was chasing
the other and both failed to notice the net.
Earlier we watched the first wave of barnacle geese pass south east over Eoligarry jetty. These birds won't have seen
land since they left Greenland or Iceland, but they mainly just keep going and
head to the Inner Hebridean islands such as Islay.
The golden plover flock at Traigh Mhor had doubled in size this morning giving us hope that the Allasdale American golden plover might be with them but we didn't see it.
A grey underwing is a key identification feature of American golden
plover....count the grey underwings! It's so light dependant as to almost render underwing colour useless when identifying AGP in my opinion.
Our accommodation is in the foreground.
Red sky in the morning.......dawn at Ardmhor plantation.
No comments:
Post a Comment