Marching on.

This Rock Dove looks less than impressed at being caught in the Spiral trap at the Obs. With two of the FIBO team currently ringing in Eilat, I'm not sure that this will make them too jealous!

Early March has seen a few signs of spring peeking through the gloom of winter, with frogspawn seen on 4th, a day that also produced singing Fair Isle Wren, nest-building Shags and displaying Tysties and a general feeling that we might be through the worst of the winter...

Numbers of Twite are still low (only a few spend the winter here), but there seems to be a bit of turnover, suggesting our breeding birds are starting to return from Orkney.

There haven't been too many new birds; a Snow Bunting went over Vaasetter (5th), there was a Robin at the Obs (4th, with two the following day), a juvenile Peregrine was over Meoness (4th) and amongst the 'regulars', a Glaucous Gull was seen on 2nd-3rd and the Great Tit, Moorhen and Greenland White-front all remained. It still feels like we're a long way off the first Wheatears!

The Robin at the Obs was the first one here for about six weeks, although one or two have been seen down the island since then.

With not much bird news to talk about, I'll mention a few other points:

• If anyone has good quality photographs that they would be happy to donate for use in the 2012 Annual Report, please get in touch. The report will hopefully be finalised by the end of this month, so drop me an email if you have anything (birds, other wildlife or interseting island views) that might be of use. My email really struggles with any attachments over about 6MB, so probably best to arrange to use Dropbox or post a disc if you have any. Contributors will be acknowledged and get a free copy of the report (and a pint from the Obs bar next time you visit!).
• Don't forget you only have until the end of the month to enter the Prediction Competition, there's been a really interesting selection of species predicted so far - why not have a go at it yourself?
• Bookings are filling up for 2013, please get in touch soon if you are hoping to pay a visit during the main migration seasons.
• Bookings are open for 2014 for Friends of Fair Isle and the peak autumn season is already starting to look fairly full, so drop us a line if you're planning ahead. Bookings are open to everyone else from 1st April.

That's all for now, I'll maybe have some more bird news after the strong easterlies that we seem set to get for the rest of the week, but I think they'll probably have come just a bit too early in the month to really bring anything exciting in. We'll soon find out...