Greenish Warbler

 The usually scrum for a rarity photo session.

A bit of excitement today when Mark rang me on my mobile just as I was having an Internet conversation with my boss that he had just found a greenish warbler in the Lowlight bushes. After extracting myself from the conversation as politely as possible (and of course once all business was done) I headed down to join a small bunch of people looking at a very busy, little warbler that was pinging around the edges of the bushes feeding voraciously. It looked initially like a willow warbler but under (very ) close inspection had a small wing bar, a very neatly put together look and a grayish sort of green.  Maybe not as hard to get as excited about as a black winged stilt but still this is a bit of a rare bird. This is the 14th record for the island, the first being in 1955. What was more unusual was that of the previous 13 records only 2 had been in spring, the rest all in early autumn.  In Scotland terms then it still isn't common, Shetland and Fair Isle have seen the  bulk of the previous records (156 up until 2004) but the Isle of May along with Grampians and the Orkney is the next likeliness place for them to drop into.  And as with the island, for Scotland only 11% of birds are seen in the spring, usually when there has been when southerly warm winds have caused them to overshoot their eastern European breeding range.
So the spring migration hasn't yet finished, what next tomorrow ?