Tuesday 17 April 2012

St. Mary's Surprises 16/4/12

Arrived at St. Mary's with Dan yesterday morning at 9, seawatching until 11 produced quite a bit, ore than expected, with 5 sandwich terns, 1 common scoter, 2 red-throated divers, a few fulmar and hundreds of common gulls all heading north. Just as we were about to finish, we spotted a summer plumaged, great-northern diver on the sea, a very nice year and patch tick! On our way out, we stopped at the willows just to see what was around, we saw a little bird fly into the trees in front of us, and as it flew out, I noticed an extremely red/orange tail and a very white breast, so we followed it to get an ID, it then showed for another 10 seconds before diving for cover to reveal that it was a NIGHTINGALE! My first in the UK, and a wonderful surprise to the day!