On the last day of August, as yet another month drew to a close and a definite feel of autumn starting to creep in new broke mid-afternoon that a juvenile White-winged Black Tern had been spotted at Echnaloch bay.
I was just wrapping up a job that I had been doing in Kirkwall when I saw the message of its presence so quickly finished what I was doing and headed off. As the bird had been spotted on my patch I was definitely going to stop off on my way past and take a look.
On arrival, as expected the lay-by was full of cars and people wanting to take a look at this rare visitor. It was a lifer for me and not only a new addition to my Burray list but a new addition to the 'Burray Bird list'.
Having parked the car and join the group of watchers I was invited to take a look through a scope already trained on the visitor. It was sitting on the water line close to an Arctic Tern and a Black-headed Gull which were useful for size comparison.
I managed to get a few record shots, so the quality isn't too good, as it was quite a way along the beach from where we were observing it.
A couple of times it took off and flew across the road to have a few dips in Echna Loch before returning back to the bay side. It also spent a good ten minutes flying around out over the sea.
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