Blinded by the Light

Hiya! Welcome to the summer....

Well well well. As many people have said over eons and eons before me: 'What a diference a day makes'. The Icterine Warbler clearly ushered some continental warmth over us as this past week has boasted some superb weather! Usually for migrant hunters this means a lack of birds but as usual the Farnes bucks the trend. However hot settled weather at this time of year often tricks southern birds into overshooting their intended destination, allowing them to arrive, somewhat perplexed, on an island in the North Sea. So I'll begin. Some fantastic evening trips eastward have been had chasing quality birds in the form of Red-breasted Flycatcher and Short-toed Lark, thats alot of hypens!! Anways pictures are better than words so shove these either side of your nose:

This 1st summer male 'RB Flicka' showed very well in the evening sun.

As did this Short-toed Lark the next day...

The queerness continued with 2 Collared Dove, 1 Wood Sandpiper and 1 Little Egret (4th Farnes Record) all being recorded recently while the rest of the islands held pretty much nothing in terms of migrants.

I love Wood Sands! They make my ears itch!

This Tree Pipit hung around for a while, presumably to keep our migrant totals ticking over.



And now ladies and gentlemen..the main event. Horny breeders! The sun got them all panking, huffing and puffing. Sweating from their throats! Anyway the season is really hotting up with Black-headed Gull, Kittiwake, Guillemot and Eider chicks all showing well along with various other virtually pornographic featherfests. And all of this means one thing for me...hard work! My breeding bird monitoring has picked up and tomorrow we rise early to partake in one of the best aspects of the Farnes...Cliffcounts! The data we record will go towards overall population research and monitoring that will help determine future conservation and so on. Basically we are the front-line, those on the ground, making the difference. It feels amazing! This is why I do it:

Check the gape. Hashtag yellow. Guillemots

Female Eider and chicks in creche.

Puffin love.

Arctic Tern dreads. A beautiful form of predator avoision/confusion tactic.

Its been that hot...Arctic Tern thermo-regulating

Guillemot vista (with my home in the background). Sick.

Common Terns getting adventurous on the mud...

male Shelduck standing guard while his bird incubates underground...somewhere!

The warm air and currents have also brought some non-avian hightlights in the form of many Diamond-backed Moths, coinciding with the arrival of the scarcities on Brownsman..with peaks of 23 on Staple and 20 on Inner Farne the following day. While the marine realm produced in the form of some Ctenophores...I have no idea what species!

See you on the other side....









From the Sublime...

The Kettle (not boiling) and West Wides 

Well what a week. Brilliant sunshine, light winds and virtually no swell led to great conditions for general mooching (as well as the preparatory work stuff) so I managed to take a few pics, some massively pretentious arty ones but hey also some really crap ones of birds.

Usual standard Black Redstart with immense backdrop.

After the nice early fall last week the clearer conditions meant numbers of migrants dwindled. However the appearance of a second Black Redstart (confirmed by the lack of any leg bling – see previous post), the odd Chiffchaff and some good pipit and finch passage kept thing ticking. The best days produced small numbers of Redpoll, Greenfinch, Linnet, Goldfinch and Chaffinch moving west. While late yesterday a smart male Brambling showed up in the company of a female Greenfinch, god only knows what their kids will look like.

Inter-specific love.

Black Redstart (cairii plumage form) on his singing post.

Corking male Wheatear, fresh from Africa. In the early morning sun.

Non-passerine action has been hotting up with said settled conditions encouraging gulls to get moving and Knoxes duly produced a 2 first summer Med Gulls and a first summer Little Gull which was fairly crippling. Now to get controversial, a Hooded Crow passed over t’other morning which I managed to get onto, breaking my bogie on this species (having missed the last 4!). Its not a passerine but is big so there. Anyway enough bull. A Marsh Harrier passed over last Tuesday also demonstrating the purple patch we’re going through at the moment!

Another notable non-passerine event was this freaky group of geese (Greylag, 3 Pink-footed and 4 Canada)

Anyway its not all about migrants. The breeders here are pretty good, and there’s a few of them so here’s a couple of pics as I feel this post is trying to cram far too much into this post:

Ringed Plover (male) looking sexy (not in a gay way0

Puffins chilling before the 'big dig'.

Hi Guillies!

One of the best birds ever. Razorbill.

Abit of courting by Puffins....bill-clapping.

Fulmars getting lary.

Arty Eiders.

Workwise we have been flat out preparing Inner Farne for the grand opening last Sunday which we managed to get done. Finding some moth larvae as we pulled grass and cleared boardwalks:

Dark Arches larva (I think).

Lesser Common Rustic larva (I think).

And yay it came. And no the weather changed. As my mum would say from the sublime to the ridiculous! The wind turned, cloud built and temperature dropped. From the dizzy low 20s last week we barely peaked above freezing yesterday.

From this....

To this...(doesn't look as cold as it was!)

Finally. As I write we have 55mph Easterlies, combined with freezing rain/hail/snow and -9 widnchill. How the breeders will cope remains to seen. But the compensation may well come in vagrant form and birds are swept across the North Sea. Watch this space!   

Brownsman sunset. Probably won't be seeing any of these this week!

UPDATE: Heavy snow and gale force easterlies have frozen our faces off while grey and white delight has been burned into my retinas!

Change

Brambling - change is crippling.

Red Admirals are thinking about calling nit a day and hibernating.

Today is one for elation and contemplation. Change of both sociological and ornithological styles is in the air. Wez, a fellow warden who’s been here from the off, left (as it’s the end of our work here) and as has Jack who departed a week ago.

With this sense of nostalgia hanging in my torso myself and Choccy drove the Zodiac Rib back across Inner Sound on a beautiful sunny, warm morning. We cruised slowly as Black Tern has been reported and as we did so our trajectory met a crippling juvenile Long-tailed Skua which flew over our bow, all of 5ft away from our faces – WOW! We’ve been lucky to see about 9 this autumn in unconventional seawatching conditions and this close fly in southerlies, like our 7 in southwesterlies certainly wasn’t expected!

Pintail blur/ass.

We returned to find more Pintail were roaming Inner Farne (after my 10 t'other day) with a female settling on the pond briefly enough for me to cock up photographing it (above).

The wintery feel continued with 1 Snipe, 8 Redwing (constantly pursued by a beefy female Sparrowhawk), 1 Song Thrush, 1 Redpoll and 3 Brambling turning up while other bits included 1 Willow Warbler, 1 Chiffchaff, 1 Skylark and fly through Manx Shearwater, Red-throated Diver and Kestrel.

This Kestrel hacked through low looking rare.

The Sparrowhawk stoops towards panicking Turdus..(thrushs)

Above and below: Redwing. Can you see it?

mmm Brambling.

Nopt often you see 2 Brambling and a Chiffchaff on the same bird table.

Despite the changes occurring across the islands the most noticeable and ironic has to be the high temperature which have brought some interesting (if not rare) moths. But more on that tomorrow!

Udea ferrugalis - fesh in from Europe (maybe) on these warm winds.