Not a good day. As I write this the rain is lashing against the window , as it's done for the past few hours , and the wind is moaning and whining outside whilst buffeting the house all the while.
Tomorrow looks better! Living in such circumstances makes you very philosophical about many things! On good days you get out and "do", without regard to inside things, on bad days you catch up on what you've set aside!
A query from a good friend in South Wales about the Gyr ( I could do with some Israeli weather , Dave), and a suggestion to compare it against the Gower bird that was present earlier prompts the following information. I suspect this bird has been present on Islay since before Christmas. Some volunteers at the RSPB Reserve at Gruinart had a bird in the north of the island in December they strongly felt may have been Gyr at that time , but it then disappeared( not unusual given the distances they can traverse ). My colleague, Andy Schofield, on the Oa Reserve thought he had a glimpse of a bird in early January. This appears to have been "translated" into it being on the Oa at the end of last week and immediately moving across to Portnahaven, but not according to Andy! So the bird may have been on the north or west of Islay for around a month, but moving around too. Given the weather that's now locked in , it's likely it will be holed up somewhere and sitting out the conditions. It's a fairly distinctive looking bird and, hopefully, it will stick around so more people can see it. Following such poor weather conditions it's always a good time to get out and look for raptors, as they'll have doubtless struggled to feed easily and then take advantage of any good conditions which emerge.
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