NORTH RONALDSAY - 12th May

Lovely, calm and sunny again first thing with a little westerly breeze springing up mid-morning which eventually swung round into the south and died away again by the afternoon; another cracking bird made up the day’s highlight with a blurry image of a female Pied Flycatcher-type on the back of a guests camera sending me scrambling to re-find it and luckily catching it almost immediately in a Heligoland trap from where it became a young female COLLARED FLYCATCHER – the third island record but we still await our first male.

                Given the fine conditions there was just a light scattering of other migrants apart from wader numbers which continue to rise toward their usual mid-May peak; birds included 3 Garganey in the Hooking area, a male Peregrine south down the west coast (the first one since mid-April), 10 Golden Plover, 17 Knot, 2 Black-tailed Godwits, 72 Bar-tailed Godwits, 468 Turnstone, a Common Sandpiper, a 3cy Glaucous Gull at The Lurn, a good influx of 900+ Arctic Terns, 2 Woodpigeons, yesterday’s Long-eared Owl caught in Holland, a Short-eared Owl leaving high to the north off the top end, a House Martin, 3 Robins, 50 Wheatears, a Lesser Whitethroat, a Whitethroat, a Blackcap, a Chiffchaff, 3 Willow Warblers, a Carrion Crow, a Chaffinch, 2 Brambling and 2 Common Redpolls.

Collared Flycatcher

as it tried to get into the trap

Glaucous Gull

Peregrine