Why do I find it hard to write the next line?

I bought a ticket to the World, but now I've come back again. And a mid-morning stomp round the patch looking for further evidence of a species new to science, 'Sykes's Reed Warbler'. I didn't see one, mind I was looking in the wrong habitat. Tbh, I didn't really see much at all, unless you want me to recount sentimental anthropomorhic passages about a Song Thrush smashing a snail. You don't btw - I know this much is true. As I walked down to the beach I saw a Great Skua in the bay, attended by a few Herring Gulls and eating something disgusting and stringy on the water, probably not unrelated to raft of Razorbills nearby. A Common Sandpiper flying across was a useful year tick for the patch, and there were 2 Grey Wagtails feeding among the jetsam with the Rock Pipits. Then walking up the cliff steps I first surprised myself by getting an in focus shot of a Small Copper Lycaena phlaeas by phone-cam...


...and then stumbled over a real treat for you dead-shrew obsessives out there. Cop a load of this one. A Eurasian Water Shrew Neomys fodiens! And moreover, one of the dark-bellied form. Oooh.. I haven't been this happy since they sacked Thatcher and she cried.


Not too common* round here either - only 4 records in the North-east Scotland Biological Record Centre database (website).
*or at least, not too commonly recorded - not the same thing at all.

If you're wondering why I put it in my notebook, it's because I need to squash it for display in my pressed-shrew collection - 27 19th century mahogany cabinets and counting. That's true that is. This one is getting a drawer to itself. It's like Gold.

15 minutes looking offshore produced 35 Northern Gannets, 1 Great Skua going south and 1 Common Scoter likewise. And on my way back through the Barricades I counted 11 Common Swifts over the courts. Went back in the evening (5 o' clock) for a further 45 minutes sat in the pissing rain (no one else would have considered it, but always believe in your soul, I say). I could pretend I saw 7 Great Skuas, but over the 45 mins regularly spaced at intervals it was 1 Great Skua north... 1 Great Skua south... 1 Great Skua north... 1 Great Skua south... 1 Great Skua north... 1 Great Skua south... 1 Great Skua north. It's blindingly obvious that this is just 1 Great Skua, patrolling, nay marauding, up and down this section of coast, getting some amazing squeaky noises out of the Black-legged Kittiwakes. It must be the sound of their souls. Only 3 Atlantic Puffins today, 3 Arctic Terns south, and 24 Sandwich terns back and forth. Ah ha ha haaaaah, ha!