Mark Lew1s
My real name is Mark Lewis
Thursday 26th September
With my family increasing in size this year, a long time ago I said to my usual autumn Sanday companions that I’d be sitting this years trip out. Some things are more important, after all. However, with my nearest and dearest in the midst of a long trip to France, and with a promising looking forecast, I made a few last minute enquiries and the next thing I knew I was on the North Isles ferry on the evening of Thursday September 26th.
It was a rather uneventful crossing, made a little livelier by a decent number of arctic skuas past the boat, along with the odd great skua and manxy. Most folk on the ferry pass the time in the bar, and as tempting as it was, I had an early start with Paul Higson the following day, hitting some of the sites in the south of South Ronaldsay before meeting up with the rest of the Sanday Ladyboys and checking out some spots in east mainland. We figured this would be a decent barometer for things to come on Sanday after a spell of south easterly winds. We were not wrong…
Friday 27th September
Paul H came to meet me in Kirkwall at 06:30 with an air of optimism and a packed lunch that would have kept me going several times over. I think the toffee yum-yum took me over the days calorie guidelines all by itself! We headed to Burwick at the bottom end of South Ronaldsay to kick off, before working our way around some promising looking sites in the southern half of the island. Burwick was quiet, but the gardens around Cleat soon delivered, with a few yellow-browed warblers and a redstart, as well as some other migrants such as blackcap, and robins and dunnocks that are not-resident. Feeling that things might be going our way, we moved on to the next stop with a spring in our step. Our next port of call was a large and unbirdable garden, thick with impenetrable cover, so we adopted the old sit and wait technique and soon had chiffchaff feeding around the periphery and several song thrush spilling out of the trees. A tree pipit put in an appearance (an uncommon bird on Orkney) and then a red-breasted flycatcher hopped out onto a sheltered limb and put on a fine show, flycatching from twigs and the fence, showing its tail pattern and snapping audibly at insects before vanishing back into the cover.
From here we hit the old navigation academy and our run of good fortune continued. In the gardens here we had garden, willow and yellow-browed warbler, a really good candidate for a siberian/eastern lesser whitethroat, and a ring ouzel hurtled out of the bushes. Olafs wood held three more yellow-browed warbler, another ring ouzel and the odd redwing, and then we headed off to another bit of cover where there was yet another yellow-browed. All around there were pipits and skylarks on the move, and song thrushes were all over the place. This was classic northern isles Autumn birding, and it was great fun.
As we pressed further north we realised that the bulk of the action was back in the south of the island so we headed back down and reexamined some of the previous sites again. We didn’t add anything else new, but it did feel that things were beginning to get quieter. It was getting close to the time to meet the rest of the gang from the ferry, so Paul dropped me off in St Margaret’s Hope (nabbing a little gull from the car on the way - another rare bird in Orkney) and fittingly, finishing off with our last yellow-browed warbler at the golf course in the Hope.
Once the guys were off the ferry we split up into two cars and headed out east. One car went to some more spots on South Ron, where they picked up another red-breasted flycatcher, among other things, and I went up to check a few sites around Deerness. The East Denwick plantation was out of bounds as there was some ringing going on, so we had a go at the brilliant looking patch at Sandside bay. Here there were redstartand lesser whitethroat among the commoner migrants, and we finished the day at ‘lighthouse corner’ where we added another each of yellow-browed, willow warbler and lesser whitethroat.
Over pizza in the evening there was a lot of talk of the week ahead. I only had a few days on Sanday but lit looked like it was going to be very calm for the weekend, and a calm day is a rare commodity in Orkney. We were hopeful.
With my family increasing in size this year, a long time ago I said to my usual autumn Sanday companions that I’d be sitting this years trip out. Some things are more important, after all. However, with my nearest and dearest in the midst of a long trip to France, and with a promising looking forecast, I made a few last minute enquiries and the next thing I knew I was on the North Isles ferry on the evening of Thursday September 26th.
It was a rather uneventful crossing, made a little livelier by a decent number of arctic skuas past the boat, along with the odd great skua and manxy. Most folk on the ferry pass the time in the bar, and as tempting as it was, I had an early start with Paul Higson the following day, hitting some of the sites in the south of South Ronaldsay before meeting up with the rest of the Sanday Ladyboys and checking out some spots in east mainland. We figured this would be a decent barometer for things to come on Sanday after a spell of south easterly winds. We were not wrong…
Friday 27th September
Paul H came to meet me in Kirkwall at 06:30 with an air of optimism and a packed lunch that would have kept me going several times over. I think the toffee yum-yum took me over the days calorie guidelines all by itself! We headed to Burwick at the bottom end of South Ronaldsay to kick off, before working our way around some promising looking sites in the southern half of the island. Burwick was quiet, but the gardens around Cleat soon delivered, with a few yellow-browed warblers and a redstart, as well as some other migrants such as blackcap, and robins and dunnocks that are not-resident. Feeling that things might be going our way, we moved on to the next stop with a spring in our step. Our next port of call was a large and unbirdable garden, thick with impenetrable cover, so we adopted the old sit and wait technique and soon had chiffchaff feeding around the periphery and several song thrush spilling out of the trees. A tree pipit put in an appearance (an uncommon bird on Orkney) and then a red-breasted flycatcher hopped out onto a sheltered limb and put on a fine show, flycatching from twigs and the fence, showing its tail pattern and snapping audibly at insects before vanishing back into the cover.
From here we hit the old navigation academy and our run of good fortune continued. In the gardens here we had garden, willow and yellow-browed warbler, a really good candidate for a siberian/eastern lesser whitethroat, and a ring ouzel hurtled out of the bushes. Olafs wood held three more yellow-browed warbler, another ring ouzel and the odd redwing, and then we headed off to another bit of cover where there was yet another yellow-browed. All around there were pipits and skylarks on the move, and song thrushes were all over the place. This was classic northern isles Autumn birding, and it was great fun.
As we pressed further north we realised that the bulk of the action was back in the south of the island so we headed back down and reexamined some of the previous sites again. We didn’t add anything else new, but it did feel that things were beginning to get quieter. It was getting close to the time to meet the rest of the gang from the ferry, so Paul dropped me off in St Margaret’s Hope (nabbing a little gull from the car on the way - another rare bird in Orkney) and fittingly, finishing off with our last yellow-browed warbler at the golf course in the Hope.
Once the guys were off the ferry we split up into two cars and headed out east. One car went to some more spots on South Ron, where they picked up another red-breasted flycatcher, among other things, and I went up to check a few sites around Deerness. The East Denwick plantation was out of bounds as there was some ringing going on, so we had a go at the brilliant looking patch at Sandside bay. Here there were redstartand lesser whitethroat among the commoner migrants, and we finished the day at ‘lighthouse corner’ where we added another each of yellow-browed, willow warbler and lesser whitethroat.
Over pizza in the evening there was a lot of talk of the week ahead. I only had a few days on Sanday but lit looked like it was going to be very calm for the weekend, and a calm day is a rare commodity in Orkney. We were hopeful.