Scilly – day 2

Two days in and I haven’t seen the Waterthrush. It’s not for lack of effort. It’s complicated. It makes me angry. If I think about it too much I start throwing things around, chairs out the window, televisons through doors. I kicked out at the dog this morning, which is pretty worrying because we don’t even have a dog. I will see it tomorrow. Even if I don’t I’ll just lie and say that I did anyway.

It’s really fabtastic here. Fabtastic is obviously a typo, though looking at it I think it’s quite a good word. No, it’s terrible…

It’s really fantastic here. The weather’s amazing and there’s birds all over the place, with lots of new stuff arriving. The ferry across was ruined by fog which cleared by Scilly and then a single Sooty Shearwater sneaked past Peninnis Head. Within an hour I’d seen tickable underwing and spread-tail views of my first British Wilson’s Snipe alongside 2 Common Snipe, and an absurdly tame Lesser Yellowlegs. Then I didn’t see the Waterthrush. After not seeing the Waterthrush we went to the pub for a real life Conference Call with John Hague, his wife Leigh and Jim Lawrence, and fuelled by booze we probably spoke even more bollocks than we do on the podcasts, which is obviously quite an achievement. If I was a better blogger I’d now post a photo of us sat together with our arms around each other, but I haven’t got a photo of that. Sorry.

This morning we again didn’t see the Waterthrush, though we did successfully twitch a Subalpine Warbler. But there’s birds piling in, and without covering much ground we found 2 Black Redstarts, Redstart, Whinchat, Blackcaps, cazillions of Chiffs, 3 Yellow-browed Warblers, Firecrest, Pied Fly and a Reed Bunting, which I always seem to see on Scilly yet they’re allegedly scarce? We saw Lesser Yellowlegs and digiscoping monster Paul Hackett as well, which was compensation for the majority of the day spent not seeing the Waterthrush.

New birds in today included two Radde’s Warblers and a Corncrake. There’ll be a Red-flanked Bluetail on here within the next two days, mark my words. I might go and see it, unless I’m still standing around looking for the Waterthrush.

Of course the highlight of today was the Death’s Head Hawkmoth trapped overnight and on show throughout the day. I did actually see one on Scilly at Longstones a few years ago, but at three metres in length and the ability to spray acid through its snout, it’s always worth seeing another. I especially like the way it was taking a rest in an empty plastic strawberry tub. You see, I like strawberries.

“I like the Isles of Scilly.” If you say that out loud in front of other people they’ll think you’re a bit simple. What a strange way to end a blog post. See ya tomorrow.

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