St Agnus - Scilly Isles

Today we sailed to St Agnus - What a day! 

On arrival we headed to an area not too far away where we joined a large group of people all viewing a pair of rare birds - Olive-backed pipits. I had never heard of them, let alone seen them before. What is more, I don't think I would be be able to confidently identify them again, even if they landed in my garden. (All pipits look much the same) It would not have been fair to get too close,  so we had to make do with scope and binocular views. I got a record shot of sorts and if you look in the extras you will find a poor highly cropped photo of one of them. 

Next we headed uphill to join a handful of people looking for a reported dotterel. We didn't find it, but we had seen one on Tuesday on St Mary's. There was a rather strange looking rock formation up there - see extras. 

It was a beautiful day and whilst sitting outside the pub for lunch, we looked up to see a beautiful black kite. It was very high in the sky and my record shot isn't worth blipping. 

On return to St Mary's there was a mad dash as every person on the boat ( at least 50 people)  got out and  legged it through the streets and up a  steep hill with all their equipment - camera, scopes, tripods etc. I was caught up in it all and had asked what was going on. A complete stranger told me to get my stuff, follow everyone else and run.  There had been a report of a rare wheatear - an Isabelline Wheatear. We arrived at the reported sighting absolutely exhausted,  but we all saw it! No sooner had we got a decent look, when a blummin' helicopter came and scared it off!  Before this trip, I had never been part of anything like this in my life. This felt like a weird Parkrun on steroids . :-)