An early start saw an increase in thrushes around Rocklea. The place wasn’t carpeted with them, but there were definitely birds new in. Unfortunately for this blog and fortunately for the birds they were quite lively, having presumably not travelled that far before this landing.
When there are thrushes in the geos (i.e. cliffs) can be good for other stuff. I went to Twageos (‘two cliffs’) as one of the better prospects and it initially looked devoid of birds. Eventually one bird could be seen some way down beneath me, and I was a bit surprised it was a Snow Bunting as they are normally quite happy not resorting to the cliffs.
Moving across to West Isle there were a scattering of thrushes. Heading along the side of West Voe a black one that went up in front of me was clearly a Ring Ousel on call. Viewing it through the binoculars when it landed confirmed this, but it was off again before I could get a shot. It looked like an adult male, so I’ve used the picture below from wikipedia user MPF to illustrate for any readers unfamiliar with these ‘mountain Blackbirds’.
As well as thrushes the main birds to have come in on the winds were Robins. Here is one sheltering under a drystone wall, there were also one or two in geos on West Isle that were presumably recently arrived.
And whilst there isn’t much other wildlife on view in October in strong winds here is a picture of a seal that was as intent on watching me as the other way round.
My camera has expired, so whether I continue to do blogs may depend in large part on whether it starts to function again. Hopefully it will be working if I am fortunate to see anything requiring a description!
Natural Selection 
Leave a Reply