I'm just back from a long weekend on the Outer Hebrides: good company, some surprisingly good weather and plenty of good birding.
My weekend started with a train journey from Glasgow through to Oban. The harbour walls are home to some very photogenic Black Guillemots, with several adults in nesting crevices, on the rocks or on the sea, calling to each other, a delightful trilling call. One particularly boisterous adult was sitting on the top of the harbour wall, chasing pigeons across the pavement, seemingly oblivous to passers by.
From Oban, our ferry took us up past the end of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula, around the top of Mull and across the Minch to Lochboisdale on South Uist. During the journey we saw an amazing five White-tailed Eagles, including a couple talon-grappling and cartwheeling down through the air; a pair of displaying Goshawks; a distant Golden Eagle; hundreds of Manx Shearwaters out in the Minch; a single Basking Shark and a handful of Harbour Porpoises, as well as a glimpsed (not by me) Minke Whale.
During our three days, we pretty thoroughly explored South and North Uist. A particular target of the trip was to be the northward passage of skuas, an event which is pretty much dependent on just the right weather conditions. Alas, for us, the wind was in exactly the wrong direction for almost all of our time on the islands, so it was quite a surprise to have a spectacularly beautiful adult Long-tailed Skua drive lazily over our heads while we were walking across the machair near Sollas, in the (unsuccessful in both cases) hunt for a male Snowy Owl who has been in the area for the last year or two, and Great Yellow Bumblebee (which I suspect just isn't out so early in the season.).
From nearby Aird an Runair headland we saw a handful of breeding plumaged Pomarine Skuas and another couple of Long-tailed Skuas: a relief to see, but slightly gutting that the last few days have seen a spectacular passage past the same spot of thousands of both. Ah well, we can't have everything...
There's definitely more to the Uists than skua passage. A highlight for me was the presence of so many breeding waders: displaying/singing Dunlin, Redshank, Snipe and Lapwing were a constant soundtrack, with good numbers of Turnstone around the coast in breeding plumage, together with a couple of Purple Sandpipers. Whimbrel passed by frequently, and at a traditional site we found at least three Red-necked Phalaropes, a windswept male and, a couple of days later, two boisterous females. The other famous breeding bird of the outer Hebrides is the Corncrake, and we heard several singing males, with one showing well in a patch of irises. We also found at least a couple of pairs of Whooper Swans, while Twite and Rock Dove were also good to see, not birds we're used to down in lowland England.
No visit to the Hebrides would be complete without an otter encounter or two. We enjoyed a long lunch break with the female below, as she hunted very successfully along a short section of rocky shore, catching crabs and a lumpsucker. On our final evening we had two separate animals fishing just off shore from the (highly recommended) pub where we ate our farewell meal.
The ferry journey back to the mainland was pretty successful, mammal-wise as well. We encountered three pods of Short-beaked Common Dolphins, a couple of very brief Bottle-nosed Dolphins and a small pod of White-beaked Dolphins, the latter a world 'tick' for me.
And as well as the Hebridean specialities, we also enjoyed our fair share of rarities. We 'dipped' the male Snowy Owl, which was present on the machair near Sollas two days before we arrived and was there again two days after we left the islands, but was certainly nowhere to be found on our two visits to its favourite corner of North Uist. But we did find the male Green-winged Teal on South Uist and the Lesser Canada Goose at Balranald on North Uist, both of which had been present for some time. We also bumped in to a young Iceland Gull feeding on ploughed machair. Almost the final bird of our visit to the Hebrides appeared as we were walking back from Aird an Runair on our last evening. A small buffy bird flew across the path and landed nearby on an area of ploughed machair. Something about it attracted all our attention, and it was very soon clear that we had found a Short-toed Lark, most definitely something of a surprise!
'Our' Short-toed Lark, at Balranald. digiscoped photo by Jo Thomas
The trip finished with a short detour on the drive back to York, and a Thrush Nightingale putting on a show at Hartlepool: a 'lifer' for two of our group (including myself).
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