Month: October 2021

My longest stay on Scilly, 25 Days entirely on beloved st Agnes. A quiet year all round, it never really got going . This, and the fact that I’ve very little time currently means I’ll forego my usual long winded Blog post and just focus on my personal Highlight: Finding this smart Buff–Bellied Pipit 4 days into our trip.

It had been raining on the 3rd of October, I was walking around the beach-side fields at santawarna with my waterproof hood up but the electric and arresting call of a Buff-Bellied Pipit whipped me out of my ‘head down trudging’ as it was chased by a Meadow Pipit. It took me almost 10 minutes to properly locate the bird as the pipit flock was moving around alot but after that it showed nicely on and off for three days. Quite chameleonic in its appearance in different light.

The Rest of the trip was punctuated with nice scarcities, and great views of some of them but it never really got off the ground. No (other) American Passerines were found during my stay and thus wont go down as a vintage year but I still got to spend time on my favourite island with some excellent people and of course i’ll be going again.

A quick break from fitting our new kitchen to go and have a look for a Snow Bunting that Mark K had seen up between Langdon and Fan bay. It didn’t take much looking for as it flew up from the tarmac track in front of someone jogging towards me and landed on the track to the farm, a nice male.

Both myself and the bird were being blown about by the 50 mph SSW gusts, but the typically tame snow bunting was easy enough to get ahead of and wait for it to move towards me. Even non-birding ‘passers by’ mentioned seeing it to me : ‘a little brown and white bird walking around by our feet’. I watched the bird from the relative shelter of lying on my belly, despite having had my fill of these kind of views on Scilly last week; this was a welcomed new bird for the me here on the patch.

Little else of note other than a Firecrest in the sheltered end of the Valley.

After 5 and a half weeks I finally got home last night. Scillies was quiet but there were some brilliant moments. Warm sunshine and light SSW winds greeted me on my walk up the cliff this am. A two Hour walk from Langdon Hole to South Foreland and back chalked up 25 Tree Sparrows, 13 over west (groups of 9 and 4) and 12 in the stubble fields up top, hopefully they’ll winter again.

2 Brambling, c20 Siskin, 4 Swallow and 3 House Martin also flew west, 2 Blackcap were in the valley as were about 5 Jays. 3 Reed Buntings were noted and a 2cy male Marsh Harrier flew south over the Port and out to sea.

Good to be back.