Mood Swings

An up a down kind of day today.

Been in a delayed slightly bad mood after receiving an email yesterday saying my Arctic Redpoll from here last year had been rejected. I was quite sanguine about it yesterday, but it's slowly been bugging me more, although I'm not going to go on about it here.

And the grumpy mood has been exacerbated by today having been an irritatingly windy one, pretty much constantly force 6, gusting stronger. Few things are quite as capable as  a nasty gusty wind for getting me irritable, but here it's a fact of life and the general splendidness of the whole place means I'm mostly too cheerful to be bothered by it.

This morning started with the Yellow-browed Warbler still calling and showing well in the garden, in a very fidgety kind of way, and was then taken up by an 8½ mile hike out from the hostel, past the school and airfield, south to Little Sea and then back round the other way to the hostel for lunchtime.

It was tough going until I got to the school, (although a ringtail Hen Harrier was seen briefly in Broughtown) where a Jack Snipe  went over, and then the little wood there held a Chiffchaff , a Goldcrest , 3 Bramblings and the first Chaffinch of the trip.

As you can tell, photo opportunities were thin on the ground in the windy conditions, with everything very flighty or skulky.

The path by the airfield had the first of the day's 5 Wheatears.

The second of the five, only these two hung around for a photo 

It wasn't until I got to Castle Hill Farm that I had anything else really notable, but very nice to get the trip's 4th and day's 2nd Yellow-browed Warbler .

Also here I had a brief Common Redpoll drop in.

After lunch I headed down to Stove, an excellent looking little valley in the south of the island, figuring it would be sheltered from the westerly. It was, but didn't actually have any birds!

Much of the rest of the afternoon was spent driving the roads of Burness and beyond, scanning wader flocks in the hope of something nice and American. But it was only the regular stuff, although including good numbers of Bar-tailed Godwits which always look a little out of place on grassy fields.

Up near Whitemill a Stonechat, a lovely bright individual, was number 100 for the trip list 

From here I headed over to the Cleat road for the final hour of the day, but en route a totally random stop at a garden I've never looked at before got me lucking into a nice (and surprisingly vocal) Spotted Flycatcher

 

The main reason for doing Cleat in the evening is that it can be good for Short-eared Owl. Today was no exception. I had up to three together, often too close to focus (although the fading light didn't help), and studying the photos, such as they are, suggests there may actually have been four different birds.

At one point a ringtail Hen Harrier arrived on the scene

And there was even a bit of a tussle between it and one of the owls. Exhilarating stuff, but sadly capturing it properly was beyond the limits of my camera and me

And that was the perfect way to end the day. 

So much of it was spent stewing over writing descriptions of rare birds that then just become such an irritating inconvenience that I'd sooner not see any, so it was nice to end with the things that for me most encapsulate what it is that's so fantastic about birding: chance encounters with relatively common, but out of context, stuff, and the downright spectacular.

Like I say, often too close to focus!