Big(ish) Green Day

The weather looks pretty good in this picture, for a short time before lunch it was almost sunny...

I did of course choose the worst day for weather that we've had for weeks, winds up to 40mph, poor visibility and from lunch time continuous rain, yuk. At least cycling out to the coast was easy enough, coming back was something of a struggle. The good thing about this activity was that I went birding at some different places and that I birded familiar places, like Palace and the Links in a different way.

Some migrants now appear to be established in some numbers, for example Sedge Warbler and Wheatear on the coast. Hirundines have arrived in the last few days with House Martin now at all its usual haunts and there were exceptional numbers of Sand Martins at Birsay, 30.

Waders provided the highlights of the day, showy summer plumage Knot, Sanderling and Black-tailed Godwit.

Dunlin

Sanderling

Sanderling

It was such hard work coming back from the coast though that I abandonned plans to search Loch of Harray and the moor so the total of 71 is less than what could be achieved on a better day. The last three species were added from the comfort of the kitchen with tea and cakes and the nice warm Aga to make life somewhat more comfortable.

The ones that got away were a likely Siskin that emerged from a garden during the worst of the weather, a small wader, that just might have been an LRP, that flew inland from The Links and two sub-adult skuas that were too far out to sea but features I could make out were consistent with Long-tailed... so it goes.