September 26th 2025

 

My journey north started in a rush. A rush to meet some work deadlines followed by a rush to meet the ferry, so I bowled onboard in the nick of time and in a bit of a fluster. I immediately went to the bar and sat down with a pint in an attempt to force myself into holiday mode and thankfully, it worked quite nicely.

 

One beer later the boat was pulling away so I headed out to have a look for some seabirds. It was, as expected, pretty busy but with very little variety, with the best being a single sooty shearwater. After a wee while I headed back in, wolfed down dinner and then set my mind to daydreaming about what Sanday might bring. Unfortunately, hindsight has shown that I’m a much better rarity finder in my daydreams…

 

The next morning, before hitting the Sanday ferry, I had a look around the Peedie Sea and Muddisdale, on the edge of Kirkwall. The Peedie had a goosander (not a common bird in these parts), at least 19 shoveler, and a pretty 'interesting' wigeon that ticked some (but not nearly enough) boxes for an American. It was lovely and birdy.

 

In contrast, Muddisdale was hard work in the wind, with little of note. It struck me that the two in combination could form the basis of a decent local patch though, not that I’m thinking of moving to Kirkwall any time soon….

 

I met the next Ladyboy to arrive in KW and we headed off east to the Denwick area. Again it was much too windy for migrants (but you’ve got to try, right…) but the little pool beyond the Denwick plantation looked really good. Here there were 9 ruff in total, with a handful of dunlin, and among the greylags were a group of 50 or so pink-footed geese and a nice little gang of 6 barnacles. Barnacle geese were being noted all along the east side of Scotland and after an uneventful crossing (loads of tysties) and a quick spin around some likely spots in the fading light after arriving on Sanday, the highlight of the day was a tight group of 34 barnacle geese roosting on the exposed sands of the Otterswick on the low tide. A lovely last birding image for the day, evoking thought of long journeys over seas and the relief of making it here. Something both of us in the car were feeling as well….

 

September 27th 2025

 

Up early but not bright, as the guy I travelled over with (the others arrive later in the day) had come down with a stomach bug. Hats off to him, he struggled on until mid afternoon but by then was feeling really quite ill and took himself off for a long lay down.

 

It was hard work even for those of us who felt well. The strong southerly wind made looking for migrants tricky, exacerbated by the fact that there probably weren’t very many of them about. Still, we hit the east end (via Cleat - two short-eared owls) and split up. I took the southern portion and birded around Lopness and Buryan. That whole chunk of the island was bathed in glorious sunshine and it looked gorgeous but there was really very little to get excited about. Having found no migrants around Buryan I swung the scope out to sea and picked up bonxie and a sooty shearwater, and in the fields around Lopness there were about 140 black-tailed godwits and at least 5 ruff. Migrant wise, I was limited to a goldcrest calling away in some sheltered weedy patches and a chiffchaff briefly in a ditch.

 

I headed up towards North Loch afterwards. Salties, usually so reliable, didn’t get much of a look as the back gate was closed and there was a pretty mean looking dog growling away between me and the front door. So, I moved on towards the next few gardens and continued to see very little indeed, until I got to the Gallery.

 

Initially here it seemed quiet too, but it’s a pretty big house with a pretty big garden which means that some of it can be quite nice and sheltered. Once I got to the sheltered side I started seeing a few birds. We’ve been told to help ourselves to the garden so that’s what I did, chasing an unidentified shape deeper into the shelter until it struck me that I was spending my holiday crawling around on my hands and knees in someone else’s garden, and I was thoroughly enjoying it. Over the next ten minutes or so I picked up goldcrest, chiffchaff, blackcap, song thrush, and best of all spotted flycatcher and brambling. None of the rest of the morning’s birding suggested these were all new in, but if we have to scrape around for leftovers then so be it.

 

One quick lunch stop later, and I was back out. I started in Lady where I had the briefest of encounters with something that was very likely a barred warbler but I just didn’t see enough of it (even more frustratingly, one of the other guys happened to look in the same place later, and without knowing about my sighting, also thought he had a barred warbler there. Shame, but at it’s only a (possible) barred warbler and I’m not going to lose any sleep…). Anyway, all's well that ends well, as it was confirmed the next day.

 

Then, I slogged along the road past the Little Sea (rubbish, the tide was right in) with the intention of looking at Over-the-water. It was really birdy here. To the east of the track was a stubble field with about 1000 black-headed and common gulls, 45 knot, and a couple of hundred greylags with 7 pink-feet scattered through them. To the west of the track was a marsh, complete with muddy-edged pool that had two delightful juvenile curlew sandpipers feeding along the edge. Also here was a pretty cool flock of 18 grey herons, and the other pools held little groups of dunlin and 10 shoveler.

 

The gloom was setting in by now, and the wind was picking up so i headed back over to the house to catch up with the rest of the gang, who had all had a similarly frustrating but still enjoyable day. Another curlew sandpiper was seen in the far north of the island, and a brent goose (pretty scarce up here) was on Tresness pool. However, bird(s) of the day went to the ‘flock’ of 139 sooty shearwaters that made their way past Tresness in one long, loose line. I wish I’d seen that…

 

September 28th 2025

 

I’m not sure there’s a more glorious place to be than Sanday in September on a windless day. It was so different from yesterday, and it would have been a joy just to potter around in the sun, but luckily, there were a few birds to see as well.

 

I started off at the east end (where else…). Buryan beckoned and a great-northern diver over the Start Point car park was a lovely way to kick things off. Migrants were thin on the ground there (aside from a few chaffinch overhead) but the sea was much more entertaining. I only gave it half an hour as I had places to be, but in that time 43 sooty shearwaters went past, along with 2 great and 1 Arctic skua and another great-northern.

 

As I headed north towards the North Loch Loop the Lopness stubbles had 140 black-tailed godwit and a couple of ruff (and another chaffinch). It was still dull and cool when I arrived at Salties (the first decent garden on the loop) which might have explained why there were very few insectivorous birds on the go, but I’m not sure I’d have seen them anyway as the garden was full of finches. over 150 linnet were there, along with a couple more chaffinch, 2 brambling and a single twite. It was to prove to be quite a finchy day.

 

Up towards North Loch I went, noting 6 more chaffinch and a nice group of 11 barnacle geese behind loch of Rhummie, and by the time I got to the gallery it was sunny and warm and felt like an entirely different day to how it felt back down the road at Salties. The gallery was great fun to bird. As I approached the verge had feeding chaffinches, the spotted flycatcher sat in the middle of the road, and a blackcap darted out of the garden and into the field over the road. I spent about 45 minutes here in all, with the warmth of the sun making birds very active and the stillness of the wind making them easy to see. Through this time I notched up song thrush and 3 redwing, a couple of goldcrest, a fine blythii type lesser whitethroat, the first yellow-browed warbler of the trip and a very nice and almost confiding juvenile common rosefinch. I could have stayed there all day.

 

Luckily though I moved on to North Loch, climbing the ammo dump to look out over the south end. Pretty much the first birds I looked at here were a couple of juvenile curlew sandpiper, while far away at the north end of the loch 4 little gulls lingered. Out on the water among all of the wigeon and greylags there were 26 pintail, and a couple of goldeneye, and all the while the finch fest continued with more chaffinches and a single goldfinch (not common here) passing over. I made my way up to the far north end of the loop to get picked up noting more chaffinch, brambling, siskin and song thrush en route and I spent 5 minutes whlle waiting for the car watching three juvenile Arctic terns feeding offshore in the Bay of Sandquoy. I’ve had rarer mornings on Sanday but that was an awful lot of fun.

 

In the afternoon the conditions remained just as helpful. When it’s perfectly birdable the mind conjures up limitless possibilities which can explain silly decisions like trying to find migrants in the Roos Jungle. Honestly, it felt like a good idea until we approached up the track and were confronted by the size and thickness of the cover. It wasn’t a dead loss (dunnock, redpoll, chiffchaff, and a ringtail hen harrier) but we know from the off we were wasting our time.

 

The real reason I’d come to this part of the island was to go through the wigeon flock on Roos Loch. This has delivered American wigeon in the past but even though I counted all 1,229 Eurasian ones there wasn’t a sniff of anything more interesting. A male hen harrier landed in a field behind the loch and a redpoll fed in the weeds along the Rooswick.

 

At that I made my way slowly back down the Burness road (more chaffinch and redpoll, a kestrel and a short-eared owl). Perhaps the biggest surprise of the afternoon had been the hummingbird hawkmoths. Having had great views at Roos I bumped into a couple more in the warm calm of evening, and between us we had at least 6 across the island through the day. I think we’d only ever had 1 out here before and that was in spring.

 

As much fun as I’d had, others stole the show that day. One of the team had a red-breasted flycatcher at the school (which for a wee while was looking like it might be the rarest bird of the trip) but the bird we were most excited about was the pair of rook that were picked up at Buryan at about the same time I was having so much fun at the Gallery. These were the first rook we had seen in 15 years of birding on Sanday, the most eagerly awaited addition to the ladyboy list, and species 209 for our Sanday adventures. As the guy who found them said; “genuinely exciting! Stupid hobby”.

 

September 29th 2025

 

Another nice, sunny, calm-ish day. I decided to spoil it for myself by taking a long walk up to Tofts Ness. This is the very far north of the east end and looks over 4 kms of channel to the south side of North Ronaldsay. For that reason alone you might think it would be decent for rare birds, and it can be - but today it was just a long slog over rough terrain, which culminated in a pretty hefty electric shock from a fence. I was using my tripod to lower what I took to be the top wire of a normal fence with no livestock anywhere near it, when the shock shot up my arm, making me involuntarily throw my scope up in the air. This made me pretty grumpy and there wasn’t a thing on Tofts Ness to cheer me up. A lost looking hummingbird hawkmoth zigzagged across the open, flowerless ground and then finally, just as I was about to regain civilisation at Tofts Farm, a lovely wee group of 12 snow bunting went through.

 

It was a relief to walk along the road for a bit. As I knew that opportunities to bird in nice conditions were going to run out in a couple of days, I took myself back to a place where I knew there would be birds to look at - the gallery. Things were less forthcoming than the day before but after a little while I’d noted the yellow-brow and the rosefinch, and a few other leftover bits and pieces. There were probably 3 hawkmoths here too. Lord only knows how many there were across the whole island.

 

After lunch I did Lady and the Cata Sand on the rising tide. Cata was the first stop, and as I approached on the road towards Bresigarth I noticed a dark shape out in the middle of the sands. Through the scope and a touch of heat-haze the blob resolved itself into a group of what looked like 5 taiga bean geese. I’m pretty sure that these are rarer than most folk give credit for. Either that or I enjoy them more than I should have…

 

They took off, revealing a pretty neat trick in that 2 other birds had been completely concealed,and that there were in fact 7, and flew over the rangers house as I chatted away with him, adding a pretty good tick to his house list. They flew off towards the Bea Loch but did the decent thing in landing in a stubble field at Over-the-water, which was great as one of the other guys had got my messages about them and was birding there at the time. It’s always nice when someone else sees your decent birds, and it was a Sanday tick to boot.

 

Lady was quiet - finches and goldcrests here and there, a siskin and a few other basic migrants such as song thrush and robin. I ducked into the shop to stock up on cherry bakewells and strode homeward with a spring in my step and two boxes in my bag. The spring was short-lived though, as about a km along the road I realised I’d left my scope standing up outside the shop. The poor scope had a bit of a torrid time today…

 

Not too much for the team to write home about today. A grasshopper warbler at Buryan must have quickened the pulse for one of the guys, and a pomarine skua was there too. That was about it though.

 

September 30th 2025

 

I started the morning with a seawatch which was a bit tricky in high swells, given that we were practically at sea level. Even so, it was really entertaining. By pointing the scope out to the south east of Start point we could see where a flock of sooty shearwaters were feeding. They were distant, but watching a minimum of 70 sooties wheeling around over a rough sea was terrific fun, evoking images of the southern oceans. A great skua also passed by, and a great-northern diver flew over our heads at the car park. A lovely start to the day.

 

I then walked westwards along the shoreline (looking for migrants in the weedy patches) to Lopness, via the Langbigging Mega Ditch (which is at Langbigging but has never, to our knowledge, had any megas…) The walls, fields and weedy corners here had very few migrants (a redwing and a handful of chaffinch) but the shoreline delivered with a little group of twite and a couple of snow bunting. In the stubbles at Lopness, 120something black-tailed godwits fed and among them, little pockets of knot were scattered.

 

The route took me naturally to the North Loch loop, so I took the opportunity to have a look at the gardens here again. It’s easy to get sucked in to looking at gardens on the Northern Isles in autumn, when other, easier to work habitats probably should get the focus, but the gallery in particular was really birdy this year and I was really enjoying being there. I wasn’t neglecting the other options, but I was definitely allowing myself to gravitate to spots where I knew there would be birds to see. That was the case again this morning, with many of the same migrants putting on a show - yellow browed warbler, spotted flycatcher, blackcap, brambling, chaffinches, swallows and a dunnock were all there to see. It was pleasant enough.

 

What was unpleasant was the scene across the fields on the other side of North Loch. There, among the greylags, with a single (related?) barnacle goose stood two hybrid geese. They were barnacle size (well - a mite bigger) dark like brents but with buffy washed barnacle head patterns, like mini, dark canalags in a barny shaped body. Perhaps they were barnacle x canada geese? Like real, interesting canada geese. Perhaps they were barnacle x greylag (imagine the logistics…). They weren’t, but I loved the idea that they might be brent x barnacle geese, if only for the reason that I could tell everyone that I’d seen some brentacles. With the quality of the photos I managed I suspect we’ll never know. Yet again, I appeared to enjoy these birds a little bit more than I should have…

 

North Loch hadn’t had a good look for a couple of days so I decided I would do so after lunch. I spent an hour or so up on the big ammo dump looking over the water, counting the ducks and waders and hoping to see the first of the years whooper swans but alas we were not to see any at all during the trip. There was nothing new to report, but it was very pleasant all the same, as was the gallery (which just happens to be right next to the ammo dump…) Again, more of the same (apart from a mega flock of 9 goldfinch), but it was brilliant making the most of the relatively calm conditions. We could see from the weather forecast that a big storm was coming and there may well be disruptions to our planned ferries, meaning that the trip would be cut short. we had our fingers crossed that the forecast would change.

 

October 1st 2025

 

Our fears were justified. By this morning, Orkney Ferries were warning about likely disruptions to services on Friday and Saturday. The ferry options to Aberdeen, being as they were, meant that my only option to get home via that route was to travel this evening, making this my last day on the island. To make things worse, the morning at least was horrible, wet, windy and unbirdable. A greenshank flew over the house as we had breakfast and some of us (not mentioning my own name…) were suggesting it was going to be bird of the day… We tried a wee seawatch before the worst of the weather kicked in but apart from a few sooty shearwater there was not a lot going on.

 

So, we went back to the house, re-arranged travel arrangements and grabbed an early lunch, before heading out to make the most of the interesting looking conditions that the afternoon had developed into. As we drove to the east end the wind had dropped to a very light breeze and the sun was coming out, from time to time. It felt really promising.

 

I ducked into Salties but it was quiet (until the farmer started his tractor up, at which point I ducked swiftly out again, with little to show other than a blackcap and a song thrush. On then to the Gallery, where stuff started to hot up. As I walked along the road, almost past the end of the garden, a little bird flushed from the roadside into the cover. I only glimpsed it but it was probably a pipit, but it didn’t really feel like a meadow pipit. I walked past the end, looked into the leeward side of the garden and saw nothing. Heading back along the road I flushed the bird again, and this time it called twice as it dived into the cover. This got me really fired up, as it sounded like a raspy, abrupt sounding tree pipit - but not right for a tree pipit. I started thinking olive-backed and went into the garden for a look.

 

Crawling in through the rosa and fuchsias I found myself in the calm of this sheltered, rather open area. The birds were enjoying it here. A yellow-browed warbler slipped past me at eye height, and a blackcap flushed ahead. And then, something flew down from where it had perched unseen and landed in the leaf litter with its back to me. I got the bins on it and it was a pipit, an olive toned one at that, with a really plain mantle. Then, it turned it’s head to look back at me revealing a big super, buffy in front of the eye and white behind, black line bordering the super and the crown, and black and white spots on the ear coverts. It was an olive-backed pipit and it was safe to say I was thrilled. I messaged the team (upgrading from my previous message where I had given them a heads up about a probable) and waited for them to arrive.

 

They arrived, in dribs and drabs, and after a little while the bird put on a really good show. It’s always so much better when other people see your good birds. There were other things new in (the Gallery also had ring ouzel and garden warbler that were new) and as me and the other guy leaving this evening headed down towards the ferry, we were really pleased that the remaining members of the gang would have a birdable and potentially migranty last day to enjoy. Last days on Sanday always deliver, and they would have theirs tomorrow.

 

We weren’t quite prepared for what happened next. Before the ferry we had a brief look at Stove, which had 20 chaffinch, 2 brambling, a blackcap and a yellow-browed warbler. As we got back to the car to make the last 5 minutes of the journey to the ferry (and just in the nick of time, really) a message came through on our Whatsapp group. One of the guys had wandered down the road from the OBP, jumped into the Langbigging Mega Ditch, and had flushed a White’s thrush! And we were out of time, waiting in the line for the ferry at the other end of the island. Even as I type this it feels like it should hurt a little, but really we were both just really pleased for the finder and that everyone else got onto the bird. They waited 50 or so mins after the initial sighting for the last team member to arrive from Tresness before going in to where the bird flew to, and they all got to see the bird.

 

They still have a last day to go as well…..

 

So, what had been a really lovely but hardly a vintage week had totally flipped our perceptions with just two birds in two hours. Just goes to show. Keep going….

 

Who knows what they will get tomorrow, but even if it’s nothing (and I’ll be surprised if it’s nothing) the trip list looked pretty handsome by the end of my visit, with White’s thrush, OBP, RBfly, rose finch, barred warbler, 2 YBW, and plenty of nice stuff like sooties, little gulls, curlew sands, as well as the usual short-eared owls and hen harriers. Can you even imagine a better place?