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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andrew Whitehouse" data-source="post: 301381" data-attributes="member: 3550">Day Five: 1st AprilFriday morning was the only rainy spell during my visit, so I sat things out for the morning.  Distraction was provided by a small and rather pale Canada Goose that spent the morning in front of the house (see pictures).  I was also able to read the leg rings on a few of the accompanying Barnacle Geese.The rain cleared up around midday and the wind eased to barely a breath.  We decided to head back to Loch Indaal where the calm conditions should prove good for counting birds on the sea.  So it proved, as we stopped at various points along the loch to be confronted with huge shoals of divers, auks and seaduck.  Eventually we managed to count 215 (Two hundred and fifteen) Great-northern Divers, 50 Red-throated Divers, 132 Common Scoters, 20 Slavonian Grebes, 7 Long-tailed Duck and 202 Scaup.  We didn't get round to counting the many Eiders, Red-breasted Mergansers, Goldeneye, Razorbills, Guillemots and Black Guillemots that were amongst them.  15 Whooper Swans were going north low over the water but a bigger surprise was an Arctic Skua, which headed purposefully out of the loch, only pausing to harry a passing Kittiwake.  In the distance, two more Iceland Gulls could be seen on the mud at Bridgend.Back at the house, the Canada Goose was still present and a second winter Iceland Gull (perhaps the same bird I'd seen the day before at Bridgend) appeared amongst a gull flock that was picking its way through a neighbouring field.That evening was one of those remarkably serene and still west Highland evenings where sounds and light seem more powerful than usual, so I talk a walk down to the floods.  In a darkened barn by the roadside I saw (thanks to a tip off) a roosting Tawny Owl perched on the rafters.  The Green-winged Teal was again seen roosting on the floods and a few Redwing were calling from the roadside scrub.  As dusk fell, vast skeins of Barnacle Geese headed over from all directions to roost on the mud flats and smaller numbers of Greenland White-fronts put down on the floods, their shrill musical calls standing out from the sharp, yapping of the Barnacles.I waited by the barn until darkness fell, with the noise of geese and drumming Snipe in the background, to see if a Barn Owl would show.  When it was almost too dark to see a hoarse, indrawn shriek was heard and a shape was seen briefly as it flew from the back of the barn.  Although the sound was unequivocal the shape was impossible to identify so I still await my first view of Islay's incredibly nocturnal Barn Owls.</blockquote>

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