Aurora borealis: What the fu-

October 10, 2005

What the fu-

Aurora header.jpg

Sloped out yesterday with JL to try our luck in a quick spin around one of the lesser watched townships on the island; it's a more or less south-easterly facing relatively sheltered bowl of an area, with probably more patches of crops than anywhere else on the island. It suffers from a catch 22 problem - rare birds tend not to be found there, so none of us check it out with the sort of regularity or intensity we perhaps should, so not many birds get found there... and so on. I've always liked the look of it, and given the choice yesterday to decide where we went, opted for it.

It didn't disappoint. Or rather, it did, but we expected that. The usual story of slogging round tattie rigs and kale yards to no avail whatsoever. One last kale yard to check, perched up on the side of the bowl, and right on the edge of the moor that leads over to where I stay. We'd no sooner walked into the yard when a warbler bombed out of the tatties in front of us, and into a hedge of roses that flanks the yard. I flanked it, and flushed it back into sight for JL - a rather smart Yellow-browed Warbler. Not anything to set the world alight, especially this year when the UK seems to be awash with them, but all the same, a Good Bird. Nothing else in the vast patch of kale except an easily seen male Blackcap. We decided to call it a day, and started to walk from the yard.

At our feet a small brown warbler exploded from the grass and dived into the kale beside us. A literally split second view before it was lost to sight. A small locustella. A... who knows what? I could guess, but that's not good enough. We tried with mounting pessimism to relocate it, but the kale yard was vast, the cover dense, and searching was complicated by the mounting wind that made the kale move like a chaotic purple and green cabbage blanket. Frankly, we knew we had no chance of seeing it again, and sure enough, we didn't.

I went back to pouring concrete at home. Far more constructive than frustrating little locustellae that refuse to give themselves up.

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