A Double Lifer Weekend

St Fergus by 6am on Saturday morning provided my first lifer of the weekend in the shape of a very obliging Rock Thrush:

Juvenile Male Rock Thrush

Just round the corner was a female Red Backed Shrike:

RB Shrike

Just up the road at Rattray there were c6 Corn Buntings:

Corn Bunting

An Arctic Skua flew past offshore.

Headed back south to Blackdog and got lucky & picked out a Drake Surf Scoter almost straight away in a flock of thousands of loafing Scoter.

Sunday involved a return to Northumberland for a second go at the Bridled Tern that has been leading many a merry dance over the last few weeks. When I boarded the boat at 12:30 there had been no sign for almost 24 hours and I wasn't particularly hopeful. The journey to Inner Farne seemed to take an age as it did a tour of all the other islands first. I tried to busy myself trying to photograph some of the sea birds but my heart wasn't really in it. These are the best of a bad lot:

A couple of Manx Shearwaters from the boat was another year tick..

When the boat eventually got to Inner Farne, there were already about 25 twitchers on the jetty scanning the rocks that the Tern had been favouring.  Some of the faces were familiar from my own failed attempt 2 weeks ago. Amazingly, and no more than 15 minutes after arriving, a shout went up and the Bridled was back. There was that awful period trying to get on to the bird. However, all was well as it settled down in with the flock of other loafing Terns:

It all made the journey worthwhile. Role on the next one !

Bloody Frustrating

When a Bridled Tern appeared on the Farne Islands at the start of the week I hoped it might stay & allow me to attempt a twitch on the Saturday. When it disappeared mid week I thought that was probably that. However, even better, it appeared on the mainland at Cresswell on the Friday & so a twitch was on.

Leaving Glasgow at 5am I was at Cresswell for 7:30 and promptly took up my position with about another 50 birders and prepared to wait. Hour after hour passed with only 2 Ruddy Shelducks and a Med Gull to break the monotony. One Surrey twitcher went on an on an on and on about how if the Tern did not show in the next 2 hours he was going to miss the boat for Islay that night. Was I the only one who wanted to tell him to "STFU"? This guy never raised his binoculars once to help look for the Tern or indeed any other bird but just went on and on and on in a very loud voice about not getting to Islay. What a boring bastard !

Anyway after 6 hours, news came through that the Tern was at Saltholm RSPB, about 50 miles down the coast. I hastily climbed into the car and proceeded south. I unfortunately, missed the bird by perhaps up to 30 minutes and despite waiting for it to appear back for 3 hours it never did, preferring instead to return to East Chevington about 5 miles north of where I had started at Cresswell.

On the credit side, it is worth saying that the diversion to Saltholm did provide some compensation in the form of a cracking adult Roseate Tern & a Hobby.

As I write this (Monday evening), the Bridled Tern is still appearing at East Chevington. If it is still around on Thursday I'm going to give it another go on Friday.