Saturday 27 July 2013

Mega Day

Out on the patch, for what seems like the first time in ages, mainly to look for any Two-barred Crossbills that might have dropped into Scatness - no luck there, but the day didn't pan out so bad. It started well enough with a female Otter and cub around the east side of the headland, I ended up watching them for nearly an hour before they noticed me ! After this checked all the thrift patches on the cliffs - waste of time, as there is hardly any thrift growing this year for some reason. A walk down to the loch to check to see if I could find any Ruff, and indeed there were four of them at the back of the loch, at this point I thought I was having a pretty good day on the patch for July, so I tried to get a bit closer to them for some photos. I'd only walked about ten paces when a Sandwich Tern flew in, well it was a Sandwich Tern until I got my bins on it, Christ on a bike - Gull-billed Tern !!!! The bird then hawked over the marsh at the back of the loch for about 15 minutes before disappearing out to sea into the fog - bugger ! It then returned after about 10 stressful minutes and continued to hawk insects again before disappearing into the fog again, it continued to follow this pattern for the rest of the day allowing most to catch up with it.
Gull-billed Tern
Otters

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