A song for Boulmer Birder

I made this up myself. I thought of it. In my head.

Nobody loves me
Everybody hates me
Think I'm gonna go and eat Glaucs
Big fat juicy ones
Slightly smaller female ones
See how they wriggle and squawk.

Well I'll bite of their heads
And suck out the juice
And throw the skins away.
You will see how I will thrive
On Glaucs three times a day.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone. No really. You rock. No photos please.

Went birding this morning before work. But first, this. Flushed with success at finding Newtonhill's best migrant of the year yesterday, Diane doubled up by noticing AND photographing a garden tick - Spotted Flycatcher, on our whirly all afternoon. To Peter's relentless delight, it flew away for good before I got home, but the evidence is here.
Diane apologises for the fetid piss-poor pitiful quality of the photo :-) , but points out that it was through the double glazing with 4 under-5s clinging to her at the time. She's a childminder. I'm irresistible, but not that irresistible. I know on this photo it looks a bit like a Pied Fly, but the description was very clear - it had a streaked slightly cresty head a cross little face (such a girly description!!!) and thin white edgings to all its coverts and secondaries + tertials.

IF I'd seen it, it would have been only the 4th or 5th one I'd seen in Newtonhill, since 2002, so a decent migrant. And with two decent migrants in the garden in 2 days, I thunk that maybe there may be more decent migrants about, and went birdspotting this morning round the patch.

Predictably, it was all pitifully, painfully quiet. A Common Whitethroat in bracken down the Elsick Burn reminded me that I forgot to mention there was one under the viaduct on Sunday carrying food - getting a bit late in the year for that. There was also a flighty juv, bright yellow (yellow seems to be the new black) Willow Warbler in the garden at the White Houses, that was conceivably migrant. More obvious migrants were the flocks of 30+ Barn Swallows heading south along the coast in regular streams, carrying with them a few Sand Martins. Newtonhill may be a bit boring, but even I can see the passerines are game-on.

A half hour seawatch (Dedication, that's all you need, if you wanna be a record breeaaakker!) in a mild southerly, 07:15 - 07:45 scooped another single Sooty Shearwater heading south with 3 Manx Shearwaters, a Great Skua north, 46 Northern Gannets north and 13 south, 1 Common Redshank, 1 Ruddy Turnstone, both south, some flocks of Black-legged Kittiwakes feeding, a single fully grown but juvenile Guillemot whistling for its breakfast, and a White-throated Dipper on the rocks. And that's all.

I would give my entire Primeval sticker collection to have been on Cape Clear today.