Saturday 24 October 2009

Some Scilly Pics – Radde’s Warbler & Lapland Bunting

Got back yesterday from what must’ve been one of the quietest weeks on Scilly in living memory. The islands remain a beautiful place to wander, but ultimately as a birding holiday, it was rather poor. We worked pretty hard to find whatever was out there, but came to the conclusion that there really wasn’t much to be found… indicator birds from the east (like Yellow-browed Warbler) were very thin on the ground, there weren’t large numbers of common ‘carrier species’ (finches, thrushes, etc) to be searched through, and there wasn’t even a hint of an American. Time to consider some different options for next year, I think.

However, I did scrape my 400th British bird with a couple of calling flyover Red-throated Pipits, and I came away with a few pleasing pics of a couple of scarce birds: a rather showy Radde’s Warbler was superb at the foot of Sandy Lane near Holy Vale, and a ridiculously tame Lapland Bunting was pretty awesome on Tresco, less than 2 feet away.

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