Sunday 26 April 2015

Papa Westray weekend

Pretty brilliant weekend, many thanks to JB and VB for the hospitality. A quick early post, more pictures to be posted later - the morn most likely.

Just out of the airport and straight on to this

Great weather, if a tad cool

First good find was a rather distant, but nevertheless pleasing 2cy Little Gull, an uncommon species here.

Loads of these guys around

Nesting gulls everywhere and the Sandwich terns were also back on territory

Out to the north end for a rather uneventful seawatch but there were plenty of Bonxies and Arctic Skuas too.

Plenty of Great Northern Divers on the sea and a Raven's nest






We were getting tired and cold but the wader flock near Loch of Ness popped up as we went by, and there were several hundred birds. Amongst the several hundred Purple Sands there were several colour ringed birds so I was searching through them trying to record the ring sequences. All of a sudden a small Dunlin like wader popped into the scope. There was a certain amount of disbelief at first but I managed a "What's this?" to JB who got on the bird at almost the same instant. From finding a Baird's a couple of year's or so back I remembered the flank markings feature of White-rumped Sand. I knew it wasn't a Baird's and we both came to the conclusion, the bird had shown it's rump in the picture above but I didn't see this picture until tonight, however, JB saw the rump when the bird flew and our ID was confirmed. Subsequently I spent a couple of happy hours trying to get better pictures. Nearly died of hypothermia....

To cap it all the redpoll on the Redpolls page (just posted) was found on the way back to base, it is a Mealy but it caused a bit more excitement...

Here are a few more pix...

 Sadly the autumn's transport is now a rather colourful, small shed...

 Blackwit

 Whimbrel

 Shag

 Long-tailed Duck

 Norse grave

Ocean Queen

2 comments:

Nick Carter said...

You really ARE on a roll, what next??

Alastair said...

I guess it would be good to find something from Asia....