Tuesday 22 November 2016

Strong northerly winds have been battering the island over the past few days, and this coupled with heave rain making it just that little bit harder to census and notice any movements of birds, as anything inhabiting the island sensibly kept its head down. Today the winds had shifted to a north easterly direction and had dropped off slightly providing a more pleasant day. A number of thrushes were recorded, at the Observatory and Nant, nine Blackbirds and three Song Thrushes snuck through the vegetation, the sound of them cracking open snail shells on rocks sometimes giving away their position, whilst a Fieldfare taking shelter along side a ditch at the north end. The ringed Blue Tit continued to inhabit the island but proved extremely mobile from garden to garden, the ring on its left leg a useful indication that this was the same individual, a lone Goldcrest in the Observatory garden was the only warbler noted today, meanwhile five Chaffinches were present, most of them feeing in the field adjacent to the chapel, 50 Starlings occupied the North West Fields and very small numbers of Wrens, Dunnocks and Robins were logged. Overhead the Kestrel and Common Buzzard put in brief appearances as a Peregrine Falcon kept a watchful eye in the skies over Nant.

Sightings and numbers off the coast have been dropping over the last week or so and in the past few days only small groups of birds have been noted, the tides and currents just off shore attracting small numbers of gulls to feed along the churned up water as auks passed by. A Lesser Black-backed Gull on the Narrows was the first for a while, 13 Black-headed Gulls, three Common Gulls, nine Herring Gulls, a Greater Black-backed Gulls, 69 Kittiwakes, 13 Guillemots and 111 Razorbills making up the rest of the counts.

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