A quick rundown of my 2 & a half weeks on st Agnes – 3rd-20th of October.
First off, and my personal highlight of the trip, was finding this American Pipit on the 6th.
Picked up calling and then seen nicely on the deck near st Warna’s well (25 yrds from where I found another in 2021 (before they were renamed!). It went missing for abit then relocated to the seaweed pile in Warna’s cove, where it showed well for 3 days. A lovely subtle species with chameleonic colours, tones and textures that compliment its arresting electric voice. “ZIP ZIP ZIP!”
Otherwise not exactly a vintage year during our dates but the presence of an absolutely fantastically showy Red-eyed Vireo on st Agnes was another Highlight. Found by Neil Wright, it took a few days to settle down in the Parsonage but was a real performer, feeding on shield bugs, butterflies and bluebottles etc.
Other rarities include a smart Izzy shrike, with the 1st winter Daurian look that we twitched over on Mary’s.
A few hours spent in the hide at Porth Hellick sadly wasn’t enough to see the Sora though we enjoyed some point blank Jack snipe.
St Agnes was busy enough with a bits and bobs of and we had a couple of our own Shrikes, a one eyed 1st winter Red-backed shrike was in place around the bulb dump for our arrival and this 2 eyed and fresh in similarly aged bird was found by Laurence towards the end of our stay.
Other finds for myself were fairly limited, the best of these was a Richard’s Pipit right at the North end of Tresco during a solo day trip there when offered a free lift from Ben Hicks, our landlord and friend who was working there that day.
A few Caspian Gulls were picked out by myself and others across the Islands during my stay, the most interesting of these personally was a near adult at Pereglis in our first week, the only Casp of this age I’ve seen on scilly, a nice bird too bearing a metal tibia ring so likely Dutch, still a scarce bird down there but a massive jump in regularity in the past couple of years.
Yellow-browed warblers were dotted around as usual and the below photo is probably the best view ive had of any species of bird in the dreaded pittosporum!
The following photo is from 2025, a Little Bunting I found in one of my favourite fields near potbouys on Agnes, an even quieter year last year meant I didn’t bother with a blog post but it’s a nice photo so thought I’d stick it in here.
