18th and 19th July
The wind had dropped right off by early morning on the 18th
leaving a lovely, sunny, warm day allowing us to get out and about trying
various ringing projects; we targeted some Sand Martins at our newly started
colony which proved to be very successful as we caught 15 birds, including a
good number of fledglings (it is especially good considering that before this
year only a single Sand Martin had ever been ringed on the island!). The rest of the morning was dominated by
Black Guillemots, both mist-netting some adults and searching for the chicks –
its proving to be another good breeding year for this species.
Many of the Black Guillemot chicks are near fledging
We
did get out and do some birding as well with the White-winged Black Tern being seen briefly again at Bewan with 5,000+ Arctic
Terns while a Spotted Redshank at
Brides was new for the year and the highlight of today’s wader counts which
included 51 Knot, a Purple Sandpiper, 140 Dunlin, 2 Black-tailed Godwits and a
Whimbrel. Other birds of note consisted
of a Manx Shearwater off The Lurn, 2 Herons, 4 Collared Doves and 60+ Pied
Wagtails again in the roost at Ancum.
The
calm 18th proved to be just a brief respite from the wind as by the
morning of the 19th a very strong and increasing easterly wind was
blasting across the island making time in the field very hard work; as is the
theme for most of the blog posts, waders formed most of the interesting
sightings with single Greenshank
(the first of the autumn) and Grey Plover new in, along with counts of 754
Golden Plover, 238 Oystercatchers (reduced numbers than of late), 56 Knot, 55
Sanderling (slight increase than of late), 251 Dunlin, 10 Bar-tailed Godwit, 5
Whimbrel and 81 Redshank while just 2
Red-necked Phalaropes were still on Gretchen.
The
limited other sightings through the day included a single Common Tern with a
reduced 2,650 Arctic Terns (although numbers do fluctuate at the top end
depending on how many are feeding offshore), a Heron, 8 Teal and 7 Shoveler.
Golden Plover numbers are building up slowly
Three broods of Great Black-backed Gulls are now flying around, photos Simon Davies
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