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 !