Day two, and an excellent one too. Virtually no wind, and whilst it was cloudy all day too it's mostly been pretty pleasant. Unfortunately it's not going to last, with rain forecast more or less all day tomorrow, with gales gusting to F12 at times!
Which made it all the more important to make the most of today.
Headed straight out east, and the Salties garden soon delivered. A Common Whitethroat skulked deep in bushes, but a Lesser Whitethroat in the same area was slightly more obliging.
Not much of a photo admittedly, but it took ages for the light to brighten this morning and this pic was taken with 1/10 second shutter speed, it was that gloomy.
Two Robins and a Goldcrest were also in the garden here.
I moved on to The Gallery, via the back of Loch Rummie, which held 20 Coot, 4 Little Grebes and 3 Moorhens.
The Gallery held Chiffchaff, Goldcrest and another 2 Robins, and a Snow Bunting was heard overhead.
Most Robins here are pretty skulking, and this is a fairly typical view.
So I really have no idea what this one was playing at!
From The Gallery I headed over towards Sandquoy in the hope of relocating yesterday's Rosy Starling, but the Starling numbers there were well down on yesterday. Presumably it's still about (there are probably well into five figures of Starling on the island), just feeding in a different place.
A Song Thrush was a trip list addition just before there, and 2 Wheatears (3 in total today) were on the beach soon after.
Singles of Red-throated and Great Northern Divers (of respective totals of 3 and 8 today) were in the bay, but I couldn't find yesterday's Arctic Redpoll.
A single Purple Sandpiper was on rocks at Tofts.
I scanned North Loch from the north end, with plenty of wildfowl present. 450 Wigeon was an excellent number, and among the 40 Tufted Duck I found a single Scaup.
Also present were 8 Whooper Swans
Two more Snow Buntings flew over, and a Peregrine, probably a male, came in and landed on a telegraph pole for a while.
From here I decided to cut across the fields to the beach on the east coast, and this proved to be a good move.
There were plenty of waders on the shore, lots of seals just offshore, a Lapland Bunting flew north, and there were Otter prints in the sand
Then, just as I reached the point where I was to head back inland I flushed a bird with an instantly recognisable rufous tail base. Thankfully it perched up sort of in the open and I got some nice views (and, more surprisingly, some acceptable photos) of a lovely Bluethroat, before it dived into the thickest marram grass and I let it be.
Back at The Gallery, an overflying Goldfinch (quite a scarcity up here)
and then a couple of Common Redpoll convinced me to abandon my plan of spending the afternoon at Burness in the NW.
Instead I headed down towards Start Point, in the hope that other stuff had arrived. It hadn't (although if the tide had been right for me to cross to Start who knows what I may have found?), but once at Neuks I decided I may as well give the sea a quick look. This quick look ended up being two hours thanks to a steady stream of birds. As always it was mostly Kittiwakes (516N), Gannets (152N, 71S), Fulmars (173N, 4S) and auks. But an excellent back up including 46 Sooty Shearwaters, 10 Manx Shearwaters, a flock of 4 Great Northern Divers and 3 Great Skuas. An adult Arctic Tern was the only decent bird close enough for a sensible pic.
I thought for a while that the highlight was going to be the pale phase adult Pomarine Skua that powered through low to the sea, but then an hour and a half in I picked up the distinctive shape and jizz of a "large shearwater" heading north, and over the next minute or so was able to see it well enough to identify as what (I am ashamed to say) was my first ever Great Shearwater!! Good numbers were seen off Orkney last week and I was afraid I'd missed the boat, so to say I was pleased would be an understatement!!
And so I headed off back west, stopping off to jam into a Yellow-browed Warbler in the surgery garden (another skulker that didn't want its photo taken).
Given the forecast, I wonder whether I'll see any more this trip.
Slowly made my way back "home", including stopping for an excellent flock of 115 Swallows near Little Isegarth (with a Kestrel there too).
All in all an excellent day, maybe not the rarities they have on the smaller islands, but a superb selection, and the kind of all-round birding that makes Sanday a real pleasure to visit!
And a day list of 78 species proves the point.
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