Thursday 29th August

Here is an image taken last week, before the rush, of part of our stand down at Rutland Water. The winner of Gie's a brek /Geese a break , the draw for a holiday cottage to come and see our geese when they are here in the Winter was Rob and Lynsey Hall from Abbots Langley in Hertfordshire. The winner of the Islay monopoly set was J. Stenhouse from Edingale while the winners of the DVD, "Hebrides, Islands on the edge", were Nina Morris from Clithroe and M. Woodward from Cheltenham. The actual draw had just short of 1,000 folk taking part, 996 entries in actual fact, with quite a few from overseas participating as well!

Tuesday 20th August

Thanks to Mary who has run the blog over the past few days for me while I have been down at the Birdfair at Rutland Water. Our stand was even busier than ever... The five of us, Andy, Bob, Dave, James and myself were kept busy along with Dave's sister, Dot, Long John, John A., John T., Karen and Danny who all came along to help us out to make all our efforts worthwhile. Thanks should also be given to the Distilleries for their assistance, Calmac for ferry tickets, Margaret for all the shortbread, Mick Durham, Gordon Yates, Danny Arnold, John Anderson, Michael Anderson, Ken Willets, Bruichladdich Distillery for allowing us to use their images. All a great help to us, much appreciated, all a great credit to Islay and Jura...... On the bird front, birds seen included were Hobby, Green Woodpecker, Great spotted Woodpecker, Magpie, Kingfisher (Paul Watchorn had seen 2 on his stream, but not seen by us!), Little Egret, Greenshank, Ruff, numerous Woodpigeon,  some of which are not that common to Islay. Off the ferry last night James had 2 Arctic Skua as we came up the Sound of Islay. Louise yesterday had 8 different Buzzards between Feolin and Gatehouse on Jura on her way home!

Sunday 11th August

This morning, Bob had a female Sparrowhawk zap a Blackbird in his garden. The other day up in the garden at the top of the hill there were 9 Song Thrushes out prodding around on the lawn looking for worms. On the bird table this afternoon, a young Robin was casing the bird table for future forays when hungry....Spent some time with James later on this afternoon, checking that we have covered all angles for our trip down to the Bird Fair at Rutland. Just 3 jobs to do tomorrow and  on Tuesday and we should be all ready for the off on Wednesday morning. So if you are going to the Bird Fair next weekend, come round to the Islay stand where you can get a taste of Islay hospitality. The main raffle prize this year will be a cottage for 4 to come and visit while our geese are here with Calmac providing free travel over to Islay from Kennacraig, this will be drawn on Sunday afternoon. We will also be holding a smaller daily draws with Maramedia kindly giving us a couple of copies of the first program of the recent "Hebrides, Island on the edge" and also C & E Roy has given us "Islay monopoly" for someone else to win, so make sure to come along and enter...