Isles of Scilly: Rare Birds and Autumn Migration Highlights
By Simon Eaves
The Isles of Scilly trip is always wonderfully unpredictable and this year was no exception, with some great rare birds each day. The ferry over was a bit choppy this time round, maybe as it's the last few sailings of the Scillonian III she wanted us to remember her!
The very first afternoon we connected with a Black Redstart on the beach close to the hotel. Then over the next few days on the main Island of St Mary’s we saw a Rose-coloured Starling, then Wilson's Snipe, Pectoral Sandpiper and a Sora Rail, with the latter three species all originating from North America. We re-found a couple of Lapland Buntings on the airfield and tried very hard to connect with the elusive Yellow-browed Warblers, of which there were many, but we at least all heard their distinctive call several times.
Off Island on Tresco, we had some good looks at Red Squirrels and in the famous gardens we saw Golden Pheasants. On St Agnes there was great excitement over another American bird, a Red-eyed Vireo, which was very mobile and evaded our gaze that day. We made up for missing this bird with an ice-cream! On Bryher, or at least just offshore, we got good views of a Surf Scoter, a seaduck that had also crossed the Atlantic.
Wryneck is always a possibility on Scilly in the autumn and one did eventually show itself and we even all got a scope view of this cryptic bird. One of the real highlights of the trip was definitely the stunning telescope views we got of a Jack Snipe, as it fed in its curious continuous bobbing motion. It even got chased by a Water Rail at one point! The other highlight came close to the end of the week when an Isabelline Shrike turned up and we got some lovely views of that bird too.
All these special vagrant birds, alongside more common species, in a stunning location, wandering around birding all day, I bet you can tell it's my favourite place to lead tours.
Comments