Burray is one of the Southern isles on the East side of Scapa Flow linked to the Orkney Mainland by the Churchill Barriers. I have been living on Burray since August 2012 and this blog is about the birds (and other wildlife) seen around island. Birds listed in BOLD are my first sightings of the year on Burray and UNDERLINED my first sightings of the year on Orkney.
Friday, 4 September 2020
Wilson's Phalarope
Tuesday, 1 September 2020
White-winged Black Tern
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.
Juvenile White-winged Black Tern (Chlidonias leucopterius)