Bounce

A beautiful autumn day with wall to wall sunshine and light southerly winds, far to nice for birding! An early check of patch was rewarded with a patch lifer? A Jack Snipe, a bird i have kicked up from various sites on isle just never on patch. The Red-breasted Flycatcher was still showing fantastically well on its favoured wall, but apart from that it was pretty much the same. A Chiffchaff, 5 Blackcap, 3 Goldcrest, 3 Siskin, 4 Whinchat, Dunnock and a Reed Bunting.

Drove over to Marrister to look for a Hawfinch which Dr Marshall had in his garden briefly, no sign but a Whinchat and a Reed Warbler made up for it. With not a great deal happening i plucked up the courage to go and do Isbister. A Common Rosefinch was found whilst looking for a Reed Bunting and a Carrion Crow was unexpected. A search of some crops had me kicking up yet another locustella. I got a uniform coloured bird in flight and it wasn't particularly small, so maybe just another gropper? With Dr Marshall off isle i had to leave it until he got home, fortunately it was only around an hour or so. We arrived and almost immediately flushed the bird from where i had left it, we got a couple more flight views and it was decided to erect the mist net. Twice we had the bird in the net and twice it wriggled free and on one occasion it ran under the bloody net. Dr Marshall managed a view of it scrabbling around on a rock and commented it appeared to have an unstreaked undertail, crap! Oh well, will be back for another look tomorrow and with any luck it will still be present, fingers crossed.