Saturday 9 January 2010

Cetacean not found


Went to Birsay today to try to find the dead cetacean, rumoured to be a Minke Whale. We walked all the way along to the end of the Links beach and couldn't find it. However managed a significant first, falling over on frozen beach sand, it hurt just as much as a black ice pavement, it was solid! News later came out that it was round at Marwick and is a Long-finned Pilot Whale, that'll be tomorrow's outing then.

However, not entirely in vain as managed to add a few species to the county year listing effort, best of all was a flock of at least 63 Snow Buntings on the Links, generally near the cafe; pix below and movie in the side panel when I've uploaded it.






Back at home a Dunnock put in its first appearence of the year in the garden and three Ravens were displaying. On distant Loch of Bosquoy the wildfowl numbers were much decreased and there were no grebes.

Shopping is still being brought in by sledge, we used the walk up to the cars this morning recovering the items that had fallen off last night, unfortunately the crumpets hadn't survived, some hungry beastie had opened the pack and scoffed all but one.

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