A strange yet familiar sense of déjà vu is filling my brain once again after yet another 2 days have been spent soaking in some beautiful rare birds. I’d say ‘what a couple of days!’ but I’ve said it so many times this summer and autumn it’s been thoroughly devalued!
Yesterday brought still, sunny and kinda warm (not cold) conditions. With this in mind, as well as news of the Lower Moors Dusky Warblers showy tendencies, I biked down for a cheeky peek. Lower Moors always comes good at this time of year due to the abundance of late flowering Ivy and sheltered leafy Sallow groves. As expected the place was alive with Chiffchaff, Blackcap and a single Yellow-browed Warbler. After a hefty wait the Dusky Warbler showed extremely well to my eyes (but not camera). What a tekking beauty. The garden held Black Redstart while another was up at Bants Carn along with 3 Med Gull on the sea below:
Black Redstart in the garden.
1..2..3..
Nice feeding party for the Laruphiles out there...
Today’s horrendous conditions did not arrive despite allowing an opportunity to get out to St. Agnes for the eastern type Lesser Whitethroat which duly showed ridiculously well at 5 ft range hoping about on bare rocks on Periglis accompanied by 2 Black Redstart and 2 Wheatear. Any comments on which subspecies are welcome as I wont pretend to be knowledgable on this complex!
Eastern type Lesser Whitethroat. Very pale, long tail which distinct white outer faethers. Something about short primaries and stuff....
My first male Black Redstart on Scilly this autumn.
Wheatears are still everywhere in small numbers.
And a novelty shot of the Lesserthroat twitch.
The rest of Agnes was pretty quiet on the bright but blustery conditions with Lapland Bunting on Castella Down the highlight. Also around were Merlin, 2 Stonechat, 50 Meadow Pipit, 10+ Blackcap, 4 Chiffchaff, 30 Linnet and 20 Goldfinch.
My first Lapland Bunting this year - only took 11 months!
Just past the Parsonage we bumped into a pale Chiffchaff and admirers deep in discussion on which subspecies it belonged to. I was adamant it was Scandanavian but the light was extreme and the pics seem to show a distinctly tristis style bird. It didn’t call.
A have to say it does look very Siberian Chiffy but the camera and extreme light has washed out alot of the buff tones on the underparts so be warned when thinking 'it's an obvious Siberian Chiff'.
So we arrived back from Agnes ready to chill on Marys with some casual patch birding in the sun, maybe even a Red-veined Darter if we’re lucky. But the garden rounds in the sun produced only 1 Peregrine, 1 Merlin, 2 Swallow, 4 Meadow Pipit and 1 Blackcap – quiet! But the cry of Red-eyed Vireo on the radio got us running and shouting Tanager style once again. We arrived 2 minutes later getting flight views, then distantish hedge views as it fed down a field edge near Salakee Lane . We re-positioned and had instantly awesome ‘in the sun’ views (Vireo’s are best in the sun) and I even rattled off some dodgey ‘grip you’ shots:
Vireos are AWESOME. Thats 3 species of American landbird in 3 weeks.
So I was going to rant on about moths but seeing as bird have dominated this blog I'll leave that for tomorrow unless something else turns up..which it will!
No comments:
Post a Comment