Bush-bashing

Out the house before the kids woke up. Of course I knew the chances of getting Greenish Warbler for the patch list today were vanishingly small, but even so I was mildly disappointed when I tape-lured greenish call at the Mill Garden and nothing popped out of the bushes. In fact, nothing at all popped out of the bushes - not just 'a little bit quiet for the time of year' but 'totally dead, rotten, buried and reincarnated as a small stoat'. Eventually picked up some Winter Wrens, European Robins, Chaffinches etc., but hard going. A Northern Wheatear at the clifftops was a wee bit of encouragement (second one this year!).

Not a seawatch day (aside from the westerly breeze, I was keen to get up to the Secret Garden and allotments), but I thought I'd look out to sea long enough to get a Sooty Shearwater, then go. TWO minutes later, one flew nonchalently past, going south at 800 m. I reckoned that, even for me, a 2 min seawatch was a bit weedy, so I gave it another 13 min (!!), getting 108 Northern Gannets going north ( = 432/h), 12 Black-legged Kittiwakes, 1 Red-throated Diver north (the exception that disproves the rule), and 1 Common Scoter north.

As I said, I was eager to get up to the Secret Garden, but predictably I needn't have bothered. 1 Willow Warbler in the allotments was the only potential migrant. But by way of a bit of a change, I found, photographed and ate this Short-tailed Vole Microtus agrestis.

Note the short tail.