The Boat Over & First Day

By 9am I was on the boat in Penzance:

Penzance Harbour - one of my 1st attempts with the Nikon D90

The crossing was largely uneventful with only 2 Arctic Skuas and 1 Manx Shearwater being of any note. The Swedish sailing ship 'Alva' crossed our bows:

Alva - Swedish Sailing Ship

The Scillonian docked around midday and after dropping my case off at the B&B it was off to Tresco for the Least Sand that had been present commuting between the South Beach and the South East end of the Great Pool. Boat fares were up again, this time to £ 8. Not that I wish to see St Mary's boatman's families starve but at that price I am extremely reluctant to 'go off island' unless there is a big bird to be had.

The boat went into Old Grimsby that leaves perhaps a mile to the South end of the Great Pool. That distance was covered in quick time barely stopping to admire a Peregrine over the harbour. Sure enough the Least was present 'crouching' in the base of the reeds. The following record short was achieved:



Lots of reeds obscuring a very small wader !


























Its best features are the crouching pose,the supercillium that meet at the base of the bill and the dark lores. The former feature of this the commonest North American Peep is not mentioned in Collins but described in Sibley With only about 2 hours in total on the island everything was done in a bit of a rush. Next target was a juvenile Red Backed Shrike that had been showing well close to the Abbey Pool. There was no show in about 10 minutes so I moved round to the Abbey Pool to photograph a much more obliging Pec Sand:



Pec Sand


























Finally I had a quick dart into the Swarovski Hide and quickly scoped the Lesser Yellowlegs along with some Greenshanks and headed for the boat. With another Yellowlegs on St Mary's there was surely more opportunity for a better look later on.

Back on St Mary's I headed to the Pool at the back of the dump that has hosted 3 American birds ranging from Mega to Scarcity over the past two weeks. The Solitary Sand had disappeared several days ago but the Nothern Waterthrush and Lesser Yellowlegs had been showing on and off on a regular basis. The former being particularly drawn to the site at dusk and dawn but had been showing much less frequently of late. I joined about another 30 hopefuls but we all dipped on the Waterthrush but had marvellous views of the Yellowlegs:

An extremely obliging Lesser Yellowlegs