Mark Lew1s
My real name is Mark Lewis
September 16th
I arrived into Kirkwall late the previous evening after an uneventful crossing - the highlight of which was a large bag of Revels that I picked up in the shop on board. I was met at the boat by a friend and we spent the night in a hostel, having set alarms for a relatively early start for a day of birding on Orkney Mainland.
So - we were up bright and early and headed out east, to bird some of the better looking migranty bits in the Deerness area. The only problem was that it was blowing a gale and it was raining every now and again too. We thought it would be hard work finding migrants in those conditions and it was. We stopped at a large intertidal area on the way out and picked up a Ruff among the more usual waders, before carrying on to check Denwick, Sandside Bay and the Halley road. Between us we notched up a couple of Willow warblers and a Blackcap, and there were clearly plenty of Wheatear about, but it felt like we were missing more than we were seeing so after a while we sacked it off and went for lunch.
Over a bowl of curried cauliflower soup we decided that birds could wait and went towards Scapa Flow to have a look for the Fin and Humpback whales that had been seen there the day before. Again the conditions were against us - choppy seas and heat haze (it was considerably nicer than it was in the morning) but we had an extremely nice hour or so scoping back and forth over Scapa Flow and noting loads of Tysties, a couple of Red-throated and Great northern diver, and most surprisingly, 3 Scaup flying past. Whales or no whales I could have sat there for ages but soon the time came for us to go off and meet the other two members of the team who were arriving on a different boat. Brief stops at the Shunan and Brodgar pools (which weren’t pools at all, they were bone dry) turned up nothing. It sounds like a quiet time but with it being Orkney there were Greylags all over the place, Hooded crows and Ravens, a Whooper swan in a field and a ringtail Hen Harrier too. It's always very birdy here...
With us now being four, my bag of Revels was done in a heartbeat and we were soon off to talk of what was to come over the week ahead over dinner. We had delicious pizzas in a place called Lucano but at £8 for a pint of Orkney IPA we opted for an early night. There were birds to look for the next day, after all.
I arrived into Kirkwall late the previous evening after an uneventful crossing - the highlight of which was a large bag of Revels that I picked up in the shop on board. I was met at the boat by a friend and we spent the night in a hostel, having set alarms for a relatively early start for a day of birding on Orkney Mainland.
So - we were up bright and early and headed out east, to bird some of the better looking migranty bits in the Deerness area. The only problem was that it was blowing a gale and it was raining every now and again too. We thought it would be hard work finding migrants in those conditions and it was. We stopped at a large intertidal area on the way out and picked up a Ruff among the more usual waders, before carrying on to check Denwick, Sandside Bay and the Halley road. Between us we notched up a couple of Willow warblers and a Blackcap, and there were clearly plenty of Wheatear about, but it felt like we were missing more than we were seeing so after a while we sacked it off and went for lunch.
Over a bowl of curried cauliflower soup we decided that birds could wait and went towards Scapa Flow to have a look for the Fin and Humpback whales that had been seen there the day before. Again the conditions were against us - choppy seas and heat haze (it was considerably nicer than it was in the morning) but we had an extremely nice hour or so scoping back and forth over Scapa Flow and noting loads of Tysties, a couple of Red-throated and Great northern diver, and most surprisingly, 3 Scaup flying past. Whales or no whales I could have sat there for ages but soon the time came for us to go off and meet the other two members of the team who were arriving on a different boat. Brief stops at the Shunan and Brodgar pools (which weren’t pools at all, they were bone dry) turned up nothing. It sounds like a quiet time but with it being Orkney there were Greylags all over the place, Hooded crows and Ravens, a Whooper swan in a field and a ringtail Hen Harrier too. It's always very birdy here...
With us now being four, my bag of Revels was done in a heartbeat and we were soon off to talk of what was to come over the week ahead over dinner. We had delicious pizzas in a place called Lucano but at £8 for a pint of Orkney IPA we opted for an early night. There were birds to look for the next day, after all.