Two days essentially spent on various arrangements relating to BTO surveys, particularly the Atlas. Realistically it's not worthwhile starting serious work here before the end of April/begining of May as most of the summer visitors haven't arrived to breed ( still haven't in "volume" or in many cases as yet! ). Completing surveys in early May and late June/early July tends to pick up good confirmatory evidence of resident breeding species so, all in all, the system works well. Our only problem is a lack of participants! However, a couple of groups are visiting on holiday and days have been agreed in outline with the "Islay stalwarts" so that a group of us can "migrate" to Jura for the day!
The night of the 30th April/1st May,2009 was a bit wild with strong easterlies and rain, in fact quite a substantial amount of rain!! My Actinic lamp (moth trap) was blown over despite being in a supposedley sheltered position! Thankfully, everything fell on grass so no damage was done. A couple of "moth-ers" are visting Islay soon and such will help generate records for what is essentially an under-worked area. You can imagine, if we're short on resident birdwatchers, moth-ers are a rather rare commodity!!!
Some spells spent seawatching produced very little despite a promising SW wind. A depression tracking in next week might produce better conditions and some skua records!!
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