Sunday 26th August

The streets of Newtonhill and Muchalls were resounding to the cheery chirping, chakking and squeaking of Greenish, Barred and Icterine Warblers this morning. But only cos I was playing them. Four hours birding and guess how many migrant passerines I saw... ONE Northern Wheatear. Admittedly a rather stonking adult male sat on wires by the farm between N/hill and Muchalls. But it's not a lot. There was a fresh westerly that wasn't helping.

It was a nice one though. Northern Wheatear.

Like Saturday, I decided to look out to sea for long enough to get a Sooty Shearwater, and assess how worthehile it would be to stay on. In contrast to yesterday, it took an appalling 10 minutes to see one today, going south at incredible distance (well over 2 miles). I gave it another 10 minutes after that, but there was really nothing doing (i.e. 18 Northern Gannets north and 35 south), 6 Black-legged Kittiwakes, 1 Red-throated Diver north and 2 Great Skuas south.

Two White-breasted Dippers were together on the burn, first time for a while, but to be honest there's nothing else I can be bothered with. :-)

Today's corpse, a petrified Common Toad. I wonder what it was so petrified of? The approaching Range Rover, most likely. haha. Look, it crapped itself.


Who said the arable weed was dead?

Poor farming practice