Saturday 21 April 2012

Rockin' with Robins

With so many birds around, there’s not much time for being at the computer, so excuse the brief summary of the last two day’s sightings:

Thursday saw an obvious arrival of birds during the day, with Robin numbers in particular increasing. The arrival brought the highlight of a Corn Bunting (there are less than ten records in the last 30 years) at Taft, with an early Wryneck at Lower Stoney Brek. Notable counts included 229 Fieldfare, 4 Swallow, 4 Reed Bunting and 91 Wheatear. A Long-eared Owl was seen again and a Whooper Swan flew north.

By the time I caught up with it properly, the flighty Corn Bunting was made even harder to see by the driving rain and strong winds. A great bird though - and Jason's good run of finds continues!
The first trap round of the day on Friday set the tone, with 19 Robins caught - census revealed an impressive total of 204 of them across the island. Other good counts included 13 Ring Ouzel, 98 Song Thrush, 23 Chiffchaff, 40 Brambling, 14 Dunnock, 9 Blackcap, 4 Willow Warbler, 7 Woodpigeon, 9 Goldcrest, 7 Chaffinch, 5 Linnet and 2 Mealy Redpoll.
Although we have Twite breedig on Fair Isle, Linnets (like this male) just pass through the island.
Scarcer species included a superb male Hen Harrier, our first ‘Yellow’ Wagtail of the year, Long-eared Owl, Lapland Bunting, Black Redstart, Iceland Gull, 2 Green Sandpiper and 6 Barnacle Geese
This interesting flava wagtail looks at the darker end of the range for Blue-headed, although it doesn't appear to match any of the other races (and its call sounded typical for Yellow Wgagtail). Although it has a hint of one of the southern races about it, my first thoughts were that I wondered what a Grey-headed x Blue-headed would look like?
A great day's birding was rounded off with Tim Dalling and Malcolm Green performing their 'Shearwater' show - absolutely superb. Their tour has come to an end now, but don't miss it if you get the chance to see them performing in the future.

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