Issa weekend

These early mornings are killing me. You can grow really tired of chilly dawns.

Today I was mostly birding in the style of a mischievous imp. Didn't do me a lot of good. Total news in brief...

Sedge Warbler display flighting at St Ann's track; Willow Warbler singing from top of the dead willow; 2 female Roe Deer walking down other side of the burn; 2 Mallards on the burn, and another Sedge Warbler under the railway bridge; an extra WW and a singing Common Whitethroat down the track to the beach. The Grasshopper Warbler has gone today (or not singing, but then neither was I), though I still got my daily heart attack flusing those two Pheasants again, and a female Eurasian Sparrowhawk flew up the valley with a tatty left wing. 21 Common Eiders were in the bay, having a comedy chat,
Click here to listen to 'Common-Eiders-NE-Scotland-May-06-and-Wren' (Sorry about the Wren again)
and there were some Common Linnets feeding on the short grasses etc. up the cliff sides. A hybrid crow waited for me to set my scope up and click the shutter button before hopping away, leaving me with a spectacular photo of a bit of rock.

Offshore... bit longer seawatch today, what with it being Saturday an'all, Black-legged Kittiwakes were pouring south at 5000/h, heading to Fowlsheugh etc. and 2 Red-breasted Mergansers south were patch year ticks. 2 Manx Shearwaters north (news today of a Sooty Shearwater north at Balmeadie, which is very atypical for May), 1 Arctic Skua* north, and 12 Common Scoter** north. And 11 Barn Swallows south over the waves - it's like they gave up on summer already.

To take Stephen's mind off the complexity of revising spelling 'ABCDE', here's a dead European Robin. The orange is real, it must have just faded. Between you and me, I think it's been dead a while.


At dusk tonight, a Song Thrush singing in our back garden. It's a style classic.
Click here to listen to 'Song-Thrush-NE-Scotland-May-07'

* and ** - I've mostly used BOU standardised names til now... but am thinking of switching to IOC names for the hell of it, except where they've made an arse of it (e.g, Common/Black/American Scoter).