Monday 3 October 2011

St Marys, Sat. 24 Sept 2011.

Today might be my last day on Scilly so I made a special effort to be up well before dawn and get down to Higgo's Pool before first light.  This I did, and was again rewarded with more fine views of the Northern Waterthrush.  I find I'm still capturing new angles and gaining new insights into the nuances of this bird.  Note the rain drops appearing in the paintwork on the right hand page below. 
Soon the heavy rain was setting in for the morning, so I retreated to the shelter of the ISBG hide at Lower Moors to sit out the deluge and try to add some more paint to the drawings.  Amazingly around 10pm, while I was busy painting, I suddenly heard the waterthrush call - I looked up and sure enough there it was just 15 ft away from the hide!!!  There were only two other people, Ken Croft and Robin Sandham in the hide at this point, and I whispered to them that the bird had just flown in and they were quickly onto it.  They managed to get some good photos of it while it was really close.  Robin also texted out the news of the bird, but it had already flicked over a bank of reeds by the time other birders arrived some 10-15 minutes later.
I spent the afternoon at Porth Hellick studying one of two Pectoral Sandpipers from a hide there.

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