Bluethroat, Inner Farne - comments welcome!Friday 2nd April Comments:
The start of April heralds the start of the visitor season as Inner Farne is now open to the public. Following yesterdays wash out – bad weather stopped play, we welcomed out first (but not last!) visitor boats of the season. It’s always great to meet and greet people and share the brilliance that is the Farne Islands.
However there was one thing missing today – our breeding birds (they hadn’t read the script). The poor weather of recent days has pushed the majority of our seabirds far out to sea but they’ll be back, but when I’m not sure. This is typical seabird behaviour as they won’t settle until mid-April, but some already have – some Shags are now on four eggs whilst at least five female Mallards are on eggs!
On the migrant front, several Black Redstarts remained whilst Snow Bunting and Wood Pigeon were other noticeable highlights (remember Wood Pigeons are scarce out here!). However the bird of the day – the Bluethroat was re-found. Having been extremely elusive on its first day (Wednesday), the bird wasn’t seen at all yesterday (in poor conditions) and we thought it had gone. However it was rediscovered today but once again, proved very, very elusive (it was hard work). This will go down as one of the most elusive Bluethroat’s ever seen on the Farnes as even seeing the bird in binoculars was difficult, never mind capturing photos. The racial identification and even sexing of the bird is proving topical (it’s tricky!), so any comments would be welcome from Marks photos – good work Mark for capturing these images!
The start of April heralds the start of the visitor season as Inner Farne is now open to the public. Following yesterdays wash out – bad weather stopped play, we welcomed out first (but not last!) visitor boats of the season. It’s always great to meet and greet people and share the brilliance that is the Farne Islands.
However there was one thing missing today – our breeding birds (they hadn’t read the script). The poor weather of recent days has pushed the majority of our seabirds far out to sea but they’ll be back, but when I’m not sure. This is typical seabird behaviour as they won’t settle until mid-April, but some already have – some Shags are now on four eggs whilst at least five female Mallards are on eggs!
On the migrant front, several Black Redstarts remained whilst Snow Bunting and Wood Pigeon were other noticeable highlights (remember Wood Pigeons are scarce out here!). However the bird of the day – the Bluethroat was re-found. Having been extremely elusive on its first day (Wednesday), the bird wasn’t seen at all yesterday (in poor conditions) and we thought it had gone. However it was rediscovered today but once again, proved very, very elusive (it was hard work). This will go down as one of the most elusive Bluethroat’s ever seen on the Farnes as even seeing the bird in binoculars was difficult, never mind capturing photos. The racial identification and even sexing of the bird is proving topical (it’s tricky!), so any comments would be welcome from Marks photos – good work Mark for capturing these images!
Nice start to the year David keep it up.
ReplyDeleteYou'd imagine its far more likely to be a white spot on such an early date ?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, forget the spottiness... I'd just be happy with the species, still desperately need that for the patch (its a very sore point).