With all the excitement of the previous days, it was kind of taken for granted that today wasn't going to be the best. No new migrants had been called in, nothing to get the pulse racing, and there was no need to rush to some other island in the hope of seeing that rarity. As a result it was decided to have a look round the north of the main island of St Mary's, to see if we could find our own birds. We did a mighty trek around the north of the island, the main part of the island, but in the end saw few birds, it was just a brief time of quietness, in what would be a good couple of days later on.
There was one twitch happening on the island, one in search of a RED EYED VIRIEO, a fairly rare bird with a handful seen each year in the UK. Having a coffee at Longstone Cafe, as well as trying to protect my cake from swarms of house sparrows, news got in of a sighting of this scarce bird. Gobbling down cake and slurping coffee, we rushed out to join an already large twitch, not too far away. Maybe a hundred people were there, but were stretched out over several miles, which is not a good sign as it means the bird hasn't been seen for a while. If a bird hasn't bee see for a while people get bored and move around to look for the bird in the general area, and so leave the last area it was last seen, in the hope of finding it elsewhere.
The bird had been seen in an area of gorse behind some grass paddocks, but not for some time. Then a shout came and everyone rushed downhill, to look into a clump of trees. Someone called out and claimed to see the bird, but I didn't see it properly to get an ID. A large group of birders had assembled, telescopes, cameras, and bins trained onto a clump of trees in the hope of finding that rarity. But after several hours, nothing had been seen, just the odd CHIFFCHAFF, so I called it a day, and was right to, as the bird was never properly seen again.
Elsewhere on the island, there were two sets of three BLACK REDSTART, one at Porth Loo Beach and two at Can Vean in an arable field, a fairly standard October migrant which is surprisingly scarce in tis country considering how common it is on the continent. An olive backed pipit had also been reported on the island last seen from a little arable field, but on arriving the bird hadn't been seen since the morning, many hours ago. It had been located in an overgrown area, and there was little chance of finding it. As it was a woodland bird, we had a look in the nearby pine forest. In among the trees four BRAMBLING flew over, and a SPOTTED FLYCATCHER was seen, by far my latest every record and my first for October. The flycatcher did its characteristic launching into the air trick to catch some flying insect before settling down again on an exposed perch, in a patch of open woodland. And that was it really, there were plenty of commoner birds, but that was all there was for any interesting sightings today.
So even an October day on the Scillies can sometimes draw a blank birdwise. These things happen and all you can do is soldier on, as you do with everything. This would prove to be the poorest day of the holiday, but things would pick up drastically in the later days. In some respects it was just nice to cover a large chunk of the island, to discover locations I had only heard about from rare bird reports. In a lot of ways birdwacthing is a means to explore new grounds, to see the previously unseen.
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