Some garden birds

On Friday as I was cycling to work, and just before I fell off, a Waxwing flew over, just outside of the home patch boundary annoyingly. However, all was made well the next day as one flew over the garden in a repeat performance. More annoyingly Louise described a Barred Warbler rather well that had briefly been on the apples on Friday afternoon, whilst I was at work. No repeat performance for that. Briefly there were two tristis/fulvescens type Chiffs on the patch on Saturday, I do like these things, although they never seem to call. These two were identical and were feeding together for the ten minutes or so they were around.

Tristis type Chiff

A new Blackcap appeared and spent both days stuffing its face with apple, still feeding at 16:20 on Saturday when it was nearly dark. Last week's ones had been females.

Blackcap male

The run of Siskins continued, another singleton.

Siskin

I didn't bother to go for the Blue Rock Thrush, a 35 minute drive, or the Stellar's Eider, still a bit mobile. I probably would like to see the eider but I'm hoping it might be a bit more settled and reliable. Not keen to spend a whole day out with no reward. There are probably two Snowy Owls on the islands as well but negative news of one and no news of the other didn't encourage an excursion.

Otherwise, nice enough calm weather, an outing to dance disco and a patch-up job on the big shed were all achieved.

Big waves at Marwick, late afternoon.