27th September

The biggest news today was the brief reappearance of the Brown Shrike from three days ago; it appeared distantly around lunchtime then instantly vanished for several hours before showing well for two or three minutes feeding on the ground in a crop and promptly disappearing again.   It was then glimpsed tantalisingly in the distance a couple of times but despite a good number of people scouring the area it was never pinned down - extremely frustrating for all concerned, most un-shrike like!   The rest of the day was fairly quiet with little new to reward the many hours spent slogging round the island; lingering scarcities included the two Great-spotted Woodpeckers, two Common Rosefinches still, 7 Yellow-browed Warblers and the Pectoral Sandpiper.   Other little bits included a further increase to an excellent 86 Pintail - an influx second only to September 2004, two Slavonian Grebes, 4 Merlins zooming around, the Wood Sandpiper still and a new Curlew Sandpiper.