Fair Isle 2016. Part 2

Where to begin? With so much good habitat to search on foot we were at a quandry as to where to start. Mornings saw me getting up early to join the early trap rounds and spend time in the ringing room before joining the others for breakfast in the Obs. Wit ha good cooked breakfast inside us and a rucksack packed with lunch we spent the whole day in the field searching geo's, ditches and abandoned crofts! Although not spectacularly successful we did pretty well with a new Olive-backed Pipit and a Siberian Stonechat (Chris - and a different bird to the possible stejgeners found by Kieran a few days later).  The long staying Pechora Pipit eventually gave good views with a bit of patience as did the Olive-backed Pipit in Shirva thistles. This last site constantly turned up good birds and along with the OBP there were always  1-2 Little Buntings and Lapland Buntings.

 Above: Lapland Bunting

 Above: Little Bunting

Above: Olive-backed skulking Pipit

Above: Pechora Pipit.

Birding the geo's is always fun and not for those afraid of heights!

 Fred birding a geo.

 Fred missed Strictly Come Dancing so decided to improvise with South Light in the background.

 Mark & Fred peering into  a geo

The scenery is stunning and with good numbers of commoner migrants as well as a sprinkling or rarities / scarcities there was enough to keep us entertained even though the weather was occasionally 'challenging'. Everyone is very friendly towards birders and even the local rams like to be made a fuss of and come running up to the fences to have their heads scratched.

A feature of the bird life on this trip was the number of Common Redpolls that turned up with some really big white looking birds and some very smart males with pink on the breast.