Friday, 8 June 2018

NORTH RONALDSAY - 7th June


A glorious day with light NE winds and wall to wall sunshine; there was a hint of some late migrants at Holland first thing as I caught 3 new Chiffchaffs and a Blackcap while the Collared Dove flock was up to 6.   The Brides census route was then quiet with the obvious exception of a very tatty BLACK KITE which flew north up the coast past Brides, went out over Linklet Bay, was picked up by other folks at the top end before spiralling up and heading north to Fair Isle (where it landed two hours later!), it was a horrible looking bird with heavy feather abrasion to both its tail and primaries, completely changing its profile to the extent I wasn’t really sure what it was!   Its almost certainly the same bird that has been seen sporadically on Orkney Mainland since November last year and identified as a Black-eared Kite and labelled a probable escape.

                While other people were twitching the Kite they picked up an Osprey coming in from the north and I saw it as it headed south over The Links and away down the centre of the island – that was all the highlights for the day!




Black Kite record shots


Great Black-backed Gull

No comments:

Post a Comment