• 32,000 pairs in UK (Late April - September visitor)
• Breeds: Europe, North-West Asia
• Winters: Africa
• Habitat: Mature woodland, open forest, (prefers oaks) town parks & gardens
• Bit smaller than house sparrow, looks a bit like a pied wagtail
• Male mostly black upperparts, white below, bold white patch on folded wing.
• Female browner
• Diet: Insects, (feeds caterpillars to nestlings), fruit & seeds late summer & on migration
• BTO records
• Listen to a pied flycatcher on RSPB site

(The real McCoy this time... )

• 6,500 pairs in the UK - in decline - on the Red List
• Migrant breeder, passage visitor
• Arrive March, April leave in September
• Winters: Africa and Middle East
• Diet: Spring-early summer earthworms and insects, otherwise mostly berries
• Like a blackbird but males have a pale wing panel and striking white breast band.
• Shy, but often with other thrushes after breeding season
• BTO records
• Listen to a ring ouzel on the RSPB site

• Secretive warbler
• Migrant breeder, passage visitor
• Arrives: April - May
• Leaves: August - September
• Estimated 64,000 pairs in UK (summer)
• Breeds: Eurasia
• Winters: Africa - india
• Diet: Autumn berries, insects (nectar pre-migration)
• Habitat: Scrub, semi-desert! hedges!
• Breaking cover shows white outer tail feathers
• Looks like has a mask: dark cheek feathers contrasting with white throat
• BTO records
• Listen to a lesser whitethroat on the RSPB site

• Glaucous gull is large, see a photograph of a glaucous gull with a herring gull for comparison

• Just 5 UK annual records
• Breeds in North America
• Winters in South America
• Often when found is in company of golden plover
• Habitat tundra (migration mudflats, grazing land)
• Usually greyer, less yellow-brown than golden plovers, stonger head pattern
• Diet: insects, seeds, leaves, berries
• BTO records

Please do not enter the crofts as the bird is easily disturbed

See Mark Witherall's photo of a Brue Snowy Owl last year

• Medium size plover
• 630 pairs in UK in summer - Amber list
• Breeds: UK - Europe, Asia, Alaska
• Winters: Mediterranean
• Habitat: "High tops" grassland with stones (on migration mudflats)
• Diet: Insects, small invertebrates & spiders (from under stones...)
• Female more bright in colour than male
• Adults mostly grey-brown upperparts, bright chestnut belly, a white chest band, throat and eyestripe, dark cap
• Male stays on the nest & incubates the eggs
• Listen to a dotterel on the RSPB site
• BTO records

• 29 annual UK records
• Breeds: Europe & North Asia coniferous forest
• Winters: South Europe, South Asia
• Diet: Seeds (breeding season also small invertebrates)
• Looks like a small (female) reed bunting but black crown stripes, white eye-ring, dark border at rear of it's chestnut cheeks
• BTO records

• 56 UK records a year (BTO)
• Fat-bodied, small-headed , larger than dunlin
• males in breeding season have an inflatable throat sac - expands and contracts rhythmically during display flights and it creates a series of hollow hoots
• wet fields , freshwater pools, marsh or lochsides, boggy ground on (migration mudflats)
• breeds on the Arctic coast of East Siberia, North America, winters in South America
• ID amongst waders - sharp contrast between the dark-patterned chest and the white belly AKA the pectoral line
• Yellowish legs, bill has pale base
• 2 pairs of white lines down the back like a pair of braces.

• Seabird which breeds in Island burrows (not ours!)
• Feeds mostly on small squid and fish at the surface
• Good sense of smell
• Smaller than a herring gull
• Dark brown body, long wings (pale band underneath)
• In summer/autumn it is on it's way back to the Southern Ocean to breed
• See from sea-watching places

• Passage visitor
• 140 annual UK records
• Breeds: Arctic (forms colonies)
• Winters: Pacific and Atlantic Ocean
• Habitat: Coastal wet heath during breding season, mostly at sea otherwise
• Diet: Fish and small invertebrates
• Smaller than a black-headed gull
• Juvenile sounds like a young tern
• BTO records

See Martin's photo of the American Golden Plover

See Martin's photo of the American Golden Plover

Martin S

John Burgis

News from Iceland over the last few days (our neighbours of the moment...)

Blue-winged teals, Canada goose, long-billed dowitchers,American golden plover, buff-breasted sandpiper, snow goose, Bonaparte's gull, Eurasian curlew, spotted sandpiper, bar-tailed godwit, American wigeon...

 

100+

• Only 4 UK records annually
• Breeds: Northern tundra - East Siberia to West Greenland
• Winters: South America
• Habitat Coastal & Alpine tundra (migration mudflats, grazing land)
• Diet mostly insects, small crustaceans
• BTO site says a Baird's Sandpiper lays a clutch of eggs that is up to 120% of her body mass in four days...
• May be hybriding with white-rumped sandpiper

• Smallest of the seabirds 12-26cm
• Relatives of the petrels
• Feed on planktonic crustaceans and small fish picked from the surface (whilst hovering)
• Fluttering sometimes bat-like flight.

• 350 pairs breeding in the UK
• 3000 birds UK passage - winters South Africa
• like a curlew (is bit smaller), In flight, shows a white 'V' shape up its back from the tail.
• Very distinct dark stripe eye to bill, pale mid-crown stripe
• distinctive call hear it on RSPB site
• Tundra, moor, heath, on passage marsh & estuary

• Dunlin sized wader
• Black eye on plain face, pale eye ring
• Legs mustard yellow
• Less than 20 UK records annually
• Diet: mostly invertebrates, plant seeds
• Habitat is tundra, grazing land, machair, estuaries, golf courses, air fields, pools or mudflats on the sea shore - prefers dry or short grass...
• Breeds in Northern Canada
• Winters in South America
• BTO records

In 2005 Andy Robinson managed to get an American Golden Plover and a Buff-breasted Sandpiper - in the same picture!

• Bit bigger than a black-headed gull
• head is black in the breeding season
• Estimated UK breeding population 90 -100 prs
• Adults white wing-tips and underwings, juveniles have more wing markings
• large, slightly drooped beak - adult's is bright red
• Amber List species
• Summer diet: insects,
• Winter diet: marine fish and molluscs
• RSPB info
• BTO info

Headsup!

Some of the reports to the Icelandic Bird Pages over the last day or two which have differed from ours include American Wigeon, Bue-winged teal, and snow geese....

 

• A colour phase of the Fulmar - Fulmarus glacialis
• The usual white plumage is replaced by grey.
• Not regarded as a subspecies
• This phase can be predominant in an Arctic population

Goat Island again - early AM

I have seen recently which I haven't seen before is a sky full of skylarks ?? Flocking together and moving on .--- could these be skylarks migrating ? They were not settled for a clear observation and the wind was low but from the west
Chris B

Peter Cunningham wrote in his excellent book Birds of the Outer Hebrides that it has been suggested that in Autumn the Skylarks which have been in our island in the Summer leave, and their place is taken by visitors coming down from the North.

Birds of the Outer Hebrides
Peter Cunningham
Mercat Press
ISBN 0 906664 00 0

(The meadow pipits are also forming flocks, some will stay on the moor over winter, many will migrate).

A visit to the Icelandic Bird Pages to see their recent sightings is often interesting for our area - On Friday the 31st August they had a Common Rosefinch - we had two reported the same day...recently they had sightings of a Sabine's gull, sooty and great shearwater, willow warbler same as us, but additionally a Eurasian common dove, American Golden Plover, bar-tailed godwit, Eurasian curlews, white-rumped sandpiper and barn swallows so who knows what the wind will bring in when next it turns...exciting times ahead

 

"We are a bit puzzled about the appearance of a pair of raptors in the Lochs area. We spotted a buzzard size bird (slightly smaller than) on a telegraph post some weeks ago. We were actually looking down on it from the road and it had a brown to golden back. As I have been away for a number of weeks I forgot to report it. This weekend both myself and our neighbours have seen this bird again and have had got quite a good look at it. In my expert (err...) opinion and from all the bird books and websites I have looked at, I think its a Marsh Harrier. I know this is very unlikely but:

It has a slightly longer tail than a buzzard, has yellow feet, it hovers almost kestrel like, and has a very distinct call unlike the buzzard's 'meow', it was almost like a sort of chirping. Our neighbours think there was a pair of them last night and they were feeding a youngster. They probably got a better look than I did at the pair together but from what I have seen and heard for myself I am sticking my neck out with the Marsh Harrier theory. It could be a hen harrier I guess, but its flight pattern and the hovering business don't stack for a hen harrier.

Am I horribly wrong?!

Helen "

Comments anyone?

Isle of Lewis Marsh Harrier reports that I could find over the last 5 years or so are of two birds one at Point, one at Ness.
(3 other other reports in the Uists) all in April or May.
Robert G

The photos that I was sent of this/these birds by the observers show a Buzzard, and not a Marsh Harrier. Buzzards can be very variable.

MArtin Scott RSPB

• Between 1958-2004 there were 118 UK records
• Only gull to nest in trees!
• BTO records

Sooty Shearwater

Long-tailed Skua

Sabine's Gull

Peregrine Falcon

Lesser Yellowlegs