Highland selfie!

With Highland being one of the largest recording areas in Britain and arguably containing the lowest density of active field birders, the chances of getting self-found birds should, in theory at least, be fairly high. Unfortunately there is often just too much habitat to cover effectively and this must allow many 'good birds' to go largely undetected. With countless days and 1000's of hours in the field my self-found list is woefully poor- my only good finds since moving to the Highland region in 1997 being grey phalarope, great grey shrike and great white egret. It was therefore with great delight that I found a hoopoe at Alturlie point last week- not a great rarity by any means but extremely satisfying within the context of the highland birding scene! Hopefully more 'good' finds will be forthcoming before too long!

Vis mig begins!

My fondest birding memories are of looking for spring migrants on the south coast of England- in particular searching a headland such as the Lizard in Cornwall or Portland Bill, Dorset- oooh the excitement of watching multiple lbj's come in off the sea! Saw my first hoopoe at Portland in April 1981 (along with Black kite, woodchat shrike, pied fly, etc. making a brilliant day) so it is always good to see one. Migration has kicked in here off Morocco- small numbers trickling through but all the birds are heading north, presumably for Europe and the British isles. Over the last week there has been a light,  steady passage of bonxies and sandwich terns. More recently several distant flocks of waterfowl have been recorded plus a distant, probable red-rumped swallow. Yesterday 3 chiffchaffs and a hoopoe briefly visited the vessel before continuing north. This morning at first light another unidentified leaf warbler and a chat sp. were flushed and a second hoopoe was seen flying past- exciting times! Hopefully the tempo of passage will increase over the coming weeks as will the number of species encountered.

I have also been lucky to see plenty of common dolphins, a sunfish and a small (circa 2.5 metre) basking shark.

hoopoe

ocean sunfish

basking shark

common dolphin