yorkslister

I mentioned we'd managed to do a couple of days birding on Orkney.  It's absolutely full of birds up there even though it was mid summer and is a great place to spend a few days.  Whilst we were there we saw loads of Hen Harriers and a few Short eared owls, a Temminck's Stint was a surprise, (it had been seen before but not reported for about ten days) we also saw a stunning summer plumage Slav Grebe, breeding Red throated Divers.  Oh and a big cat, no really it was massive, a big black thing, probably not big enough to be a panther in fairness but still massive.

This is the Temminck's, not the big cat!

Best of all on the trip were two different pods of killers, one seen from land between Stromness and Hoy and the other seen close to the boat.  I've tried to upload a video of them but it keeps rejecting it!  Here's Bill after seeing them.

I think this man is pretty happy!

On the last day we drove down to South Ronaldsay, just exploring really and stumbled across a really amazing looking site.  Here's a few pics of the habbo, this place is one of the rarest looking sites I've ever seen, it's almost as good as the gulley trap on Fair isle!

It starts off like this 

Gets a bit denser

Gets a bit deeper and the trees more mature

And then is like this!

Here's the thing though, I've never heard of the place!  The signpost at the end of the road says Windwick and there's a hut with ringing equipment in it so the place is obviously (well)watched.  It's on the east side of South Ron so it must get stuff, it had marked trails running through it so it can't be private so why have I never heard of it?  The only two reasons I can come up with are it's known by a different name or the people watching it don't put news out!  I know one thing if we are up there in Sept/Oct I'm having a couple of days there