Thursday 14th November

Over at Claggain Bay today, John W. had 2 Long tailed Ducks, earlier on he had 2 Goldcrests and a Treecreeper on his way there. Later on he had a male Hen Harrier while over on the Oa. Yesterday Ed had 5 Goldeneye and 2 Long tailed Ducks on Ardnave. There appears to be some more Long tailed Ducks around this Autumn round Islay.  Wearing his official "hat" Ed saw 2 collared Whitefronts both caught and collared in Wexford, one was originally caught in 2001 and last seen back in 2007 and then had gone awol since then, until Ed saw it again.

Wednesday 12th December

This afternoon, I had a phone call from Malcolm with a simple request to help out with the ringing of some Greenland Whitefronts that hat had been canon netted over in a field at Ballinaby, so off I went. The actual canon netting and ringing of the said geese was carried out by Carl Mitchell from Kingussie and Larry Griffin who both work for WWT and their work covers monitoring goose populations. Carl is based up at Kingussie in the Scottish Highlands while Larry lives near Dumfries and based at Caerlaverock. I had not realised before I went to help that this infact was only the 3rd time of ringing Whitefronts on Islay, with a total of only 30 geese being rung prior to today when a further 31 were caught and rung with BTO leg rings, davic rings on the other leg and also a neck collar to aid id. The last time ringing took place was in 1991 I believe. As part of Carl and Larry's work, 2 of the geese were fitted with radio transponders so their position can be logged every 4 hours. Once I have more information to hand, I will post on the blog for folk to follow their travels.  Malcolm and Peter were also there helping out too. As a point of interest, James had 5 Whitefronts with collars earlier in the Autumn at Gruinart, and all these geese were rung at Loch Ken  last year by Larry!