St. Agnes

Spent the day on St. Agnes today, which relieved the relative (for Scilly) boredom of slogging around St. Mary's and seeing very little. Mark and I headed straight for Gugh once we left the boat. The sandbar separating the island of St. Agnes from Gugh was just starting to become uncovered, so I did a bit of paddling and scampered across to be first on the islet. There were quite a few birds around the plantation, including my first 2 Fieldfares of the autumn. Ring Ouzel, Redstart, Black Redstart, Pied Flycatcher and a few Wheatears were also a nice supporting cast. Mark got onto a Wryneck, twice, but a never managed to see it and I couldn't really be arsed to hang around and wait for it to come back out, so we headed off to St. Agnes for some lunch at Covean Tearooms. My first cream-tea of the trip was greatly appreciated and I even helped Mark finish off his, as he also had the mushroom soup (5/5 Mark gave it) and couldn't just manage the rest of his cream-tea. Well, that's what mates are for, eh.
It was really nice to bump into Graham Gordon on Gugh, a friend that I first met when I was in the RAF in Norfolk and he was at the UEA, and whom I subsequently spent a lot of time with at Cape May in New Jersey. Graham now lives on St. Agnes and he spent the rest of the afternoon taking us around fields and hedgerows that were off-limits to most visiting birders. Firecrest, Ring Ouzel, Garden Warblers and lots of finches were our reward.
All-in-all a nice day, with lovely sunny weather (shorts and t-shirts weather really). At least when there are now birds on Scilly it's still really enjoyable to walk round.

Reed Warbler

 
 Firecrest