Fate often seems to play a huge part in rarity finding. Alarm set, I left for another day's work on mainland on time only to glimpse with my naked eye what appeared likely to be a female Bluethroat 'jump' up onto our wall, cock its tail and disappear down the other side. I dropped what I was carrying, jumped the wall and anticipated/hoped to see the Bluethroat the other side, but no, nothing. I quickly walked the length of the wall... no sign... the adjacent burn... no sign... I'd effectively missed my ferry, but in all honesty, on JFC telling me the news of the Pallas's Reed Bunting on Utsira I'd been in two minds whether to go to work today anyway! Instead I popped indoors, told Brenda to keep an eye out for a Bluethroat and that I'd decided not to go to work! I re-walked around the garden, down the burn and then off towards Norwick. I'd seen very little when I reached Leawart and on seeing a movement in the rosa, there was my first BB rarirty find of the year... a Subalpine Warbler... albeit a(nother) female! Disappointingly it remained silent, but I put the news out and was soon joined by Steve and Marion. The Warbler started to show better but still remained silent. Brenda then pinged through an image of the Bluethroat... it was back in our garden! I elected to stay with the Warbler but Steve & Marion left and by the time they reached our garden an interesting male flava Wagtail was strutting its stuff around our lawn! I took a look at Valyie seeing my first 2 House Martins of the year, a Chiffchaff, a singing Redwing and a Brambling. I then joined Mike who had elicited a strong response from the Subalpine Warbler to calls of a Western but it had remained silent. He kindly gave me a lift home where we saw the Wagtail and were soon joined by Chris and Tracey and 2 Collared Doves but the Bluethroat failed to show again. The afternoon proved quieter with Brenda photographing a Tree Sparrow in our garden, seeing another Collared Dove at Burrafirth and a Long-eared Owl.
 Female Bluethroat in our garden        Female Subalpine Warbler sp. at Leawart, Norwick   at times its primary projection appeared quite long and pointed (pro-eastern) |
tail pattern in accordance with what was formerly considered pro-Western/Moltoni's
very worn primaries ('unhelpful' for Moltoni's)
'Yellow' Wagtail on our lawn
Tom Gale had recently drawn my attention to an interesting 'Yellow' Wagtail present on North Ronaldsay recently (pics here) that he's been busy researching and putting together some very informative montages of the various forms and intergrades from across the range of both Yellow Wagtail and Eastern Yellow Wagtail. Today's bird looks very similar to the North Ronaldsay individual albeit showing a slightly less well-marked supercilum. With regard to thunbergi 'Grey-headed Wagtail' Shirihai & Svensson (2020) state 'in general there is no white supercilium, but a minority (possibly the result from inter-breeding with flava) have 'remnants' of white above or immediately behind or (rarely) in front of eye.
Long-eared Owl
a beautifully pale-faced individual
