North Ronaldsay

Oo, er, I'm not keen on this bit

Louise's sister who is visiting us kindly volunteered to look after the offspring for a day and a night so we hopped on the plane and spent a day and a bit on North Ron.

We were very well looked after at the observatory, highly recommended and had a great day tromping up to the north end, carefully avoiding Tor Ness where the White-billed Diver was found the next morning.

The famous beach grazing sheep

The contrast was really interesting with Meadow Pipit and Pied Wagtail thinly but widely scattered, until today they've been very difficult to find on Mainland. Skylarks were singing everywhere, bit thin on the ground on West Mainland. We managed to see Jack Snipe, flushed from the road side and a short seawatch from Denis Head produced a bit of Kittiwake movement.


The most striking thing for me about the island were the Fulmars. They nest on the ground by the dykes (walls), so were busy establishing territory and spend their time making low level passes across the fields. Pretty much everywhere you go there's Fulmars passing you by at head level.

Fulmars laying claim to a dyke

Fulmar

Back at the ranch there was Goldfinch on the Nyger feeder yesterday and still three male Chaffinch which have begun to sing. Meadow Pipit was heard by The Shunan. The Song Thrush still sings in the evening and a few Jackdaw are coming in to the roost (I need to get a look at these birds on the deck as I suspect monedula). There were Golden Plover at Loch of Bosquoy this morning and I also espied a long distance Pied Wagtail.

Goldfinch on Nyger feeder

Garden days

Lots of jobs to do in the garden so I didn't go anywhere much this weekend and it was quiet in Harray (apart from the Song Thrush and the Rooks. see video at the bottom of this post.

By special request, a picture of the pup

The cold weather has put the Oystercatchers back in loafing mood, they are no longer piping suicidally inches from the road but are back on The Shunan sitting around. The putative Yellow-legged Gull of earlier in the week did not reappear. The huge Pink-feet flock behind the house has dwindled from about 1000 to just 20 or so.

Good clouds

I've been trying to write up the Lapland Bunting influx of the autumn. It seems that this sort of influx has not occurred for quite a while and I've been reading references from the 60s.

Ah, the video won't upload, I'll try again tomorrow.

Music

I've changed the music in the side panel (just scroll to the bottom), nothing too radical (excepting These New Puritans perhaps) but some interesting historical stuff - especially enjoyed seeing Jeff "The Skunk" Baxter and Denny Diaz duelling from the 70s (and how the camera guys just couldn't keep up).

Melt

Yuk. Wind, rain, sleet, snow, more wind, more sleet, more yuk. So I stayed indoors nearly all day, except when I took the puppy out. And with all that I still managed to add a species to the year's "from the garden" list as two Brambling mooched around the feeders with the Chaffinches (all five of them).

Cooked cheese scones, fish cakes and celery soup; listened to The Floyd, Beta Band and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone (of course).

Garden listing

Birding from the garden was the order of the day. Trying to add to the year's "from the garden" list. Scaup was new for the year and a species I've struggled to ID from home previously. There was no wind and uncommonly, no haze. So Scaup was not so hard to pick out on distant Loch of Harray. Slavonian Grebe did not fall quite so easily but a quick trip down to the lochside proved a suitably cunning plan to locate a small flotilla. Thursday had produced the first Skylark and other recent additions have been Lesser Black-backed Gull and Pink-footed Goose. Louise claimed a Siskin on Thursday too. Woodpigeons have recently returned and these were easily seen from the garden today.

On Loch of Bosquoy a Goosander was back, probably one of the two drakes that have been lurking and I've been suppressing on Loch of Harray, hoping to add to our bird race total but on the day we failed to find them, karma.

At the end of the day a small raptor on a post down near Loch of Harray was quite likely a Merlin but it was more patient and despite watching for 30 minutes or so it managed to fly and disappear whilst I moved the scope into the kitchen. However, Short-eared Owl was espied by Loch of Bosquoy on another post. The list stands at 53.



Interesting bits and bods from the day -the obvious increase in Tufted Duck on Loch of Harray, there were several hundred and probably 50 Goldeneye. Two flocks of Skylarks appeared briefly in the neighbouring field, a 16 and an 18. Chaffinch numbers reached 5, which might be a record. The Oystercatchers returned to flocking on The Shunan. Disconsolate with the snow and freezing temperature they had given up on amorous activities and 201 sat sulking on the island and around the shore.

Bird racing

A pretty good day out mostly in the West Mainland but with the last part of the day spent East. Best birds were Common Redpoll at Dale, Swanney and Bullfinch at Finstown. We managed one Wren, one Redwing and no Snipe. Best laid plans that went awry, Goosander (seen well yesterday), Snow Buntings and Stonechat (also seen yesterday).

Our very organised team leader returning from a bit of a grouse

The team total was 91 with the total species seen by all teams being 98. Also available were Siskin (at Queenamida, a mile up a rough track), the afore mentioned Goosander, Surf Scoter (most likely) and probably Black-throated Diver, Red-necked Grebe and Little Auk but it was a tad rough on the sea.

Aurora borealis

The aurora is showing this evening. Unfortunately there is cloud approaching from the north which is limiting it.

Plenty of Pink-feet going over at about 9 p.m.

Bird race swotting

The bird race is next weekend so as a member of the reigning champion team some serious preparation was required. I've also got a long list of jobs to do at home so it was all a bit of a balancing act. However, vital species like Snow Bunting, Shoveler, Pintail, Barnacle Goose and Red-throated Diver have now been nailed down; here's hoping they don't bog off before next Sunday.

Bird of the day was a tie between a smart Blue Fulmar moving west off the Brough car park this morn in a fairly heavy Fulmar passage and the Short-eared Owl which performed for 5 minutes or so in fields below the garden late this afternoon.


In the afternoon, whilst the new puppy was kipping, we had a family trip to Marwick, huge waves, thousands of Guillemots and aerobatic Fulmars were enjoyed by all.

Mostly a music weekend

Happy sheep with their Sony Walkman MP3 players

So no Mumford tickets for me, getting up at 6 was not early enough by a long chalk. For the next big gig here I'll be getting the sleeping bag out. By the time I was there at 7 there were 500 people in the queue for 350 tickets (limited to 2 each) there were to be a lot of very disappointed folk in that queue. Still, I've got my Graham Fellows (John Shuttleworth) tickets.

The other big effort this weekend was to fight with iTunes and my iPod. My iPod is a pretty thing, pretty ~~~~~~~ useless IMHO. Anyway having returned it to default and reinstalled the software yet again de-derr the podcast function appeared and (wonder of wonders) appears to work. Managed to get some album art to download as well - using the free 100 of two bits of downloaded software, but in the end might have to buy one of these fixing products as they help eliminate duplicates and sort out most of the other iTunes bugs and glitches. Why couldn't Apple with all its zillions sort this out rather than leave it to these independant software writers? WMP is not perfect, and I'm no fan of MS but its a way better bit of software. All the glitches are of course related to Apples attempt to make me buy music via the ghastly iTunes store. What is required is some open source alternative to iTunes that will still make the iPod work... Apple won't like this idea of course. Rant, rant but for such expensive kit it is very disappointing. Now don't get me started on their recent laptops ...

On the positive side great reggae programme on BBC4 on Friday night.

Common Gulls, mostly, and some of 222 Oystercatchers at Loch of Bosquoy today

Birding, oh yes I did do some of that. Some good flocks of Oystercatchers around and about inland. A secret site (bird race coming up) produced both Red-throated Diver and Goosander. The Shunan had 55 Shelduck and good numbers of Curlew and Redshank as well as a marauding Peregrine. Black-headed Gulls are now a common site across the fields. The female Chaffinch continues to frequent the garden.

Oystercatchers

When we got back on Sunday evening Oystercatcher was heard in the night. Today there were 70 on The Shunan, the first ones I've seen here since last autumn. Spring is sprunging.

Cairngorm

We went to Cairngorm last weekend, I had Friday off so after the obligatory shopping in Inverness we headed south and into the hills. Saturday dawned bright and still, ideal. Took a walk around the Loch Morlich area and soon bumped into a decent flock of Lindsay's faves. The birds were singing, to my ear the song was very different from the North Yorkshire birds I'm familiar with. Very hard to see detail in the field and I snapped away happily. To my eye these birds look like curvirostra but...

Dunnock in the wind

A real howler is battering us tonight. During the day it relaxed considerably but first thing it blew with nasty, biting snow. Sheltering in the doorway to greet the customers I was rather surprised to find a Dunnock flitting around, pretty sure this is only my second record of this species at work.

The spring theme was continued earlier in the week, a Black-headed Gull was amongst the Commons on the playing fields. It doesn't feel like spring right now.