A trip to Ness requires a few stops en-route to bird. Hey, that’s my job. A look at the old Borve Snowy Owl hangout drew a blank, but a line of crows on a far off wire looked as if they might be mobbing something.
I went a few yards up the road. Nope they weren’t mobbing anything – just sitting there – but hang on they are Jackdaws! Local mega – and 17 of them!
Any Jackdaw away from Stornoway is more than noteworthy. Likelihood is these wee masked bandits were mainland birds, or evictees from the big freeze up further east on the continent. Nice.
Other pre croft meeting in Ness produced 10 Iceland Gulls, 3 Glaucous and a couple of Fieldfares up the Butt.
Update from Shetland: ”exceptional numbers but it is the second time in a just a few years that we have had a late autumn influx with a couple of hundred or so overwintering. Biggest flock this winter is one of at least 94 at Scalloway but there are 20-30 on Unst and others elsewhere.” http://www.nature-shetland.co.uk/ so that confirms the Jackdaw influx theory.
