Today the weather started out not so good with strong winds from north west in the morning and some spots of rain. By mid-day it had cleared up and turned into a good day, as well as a good days birding.

To skip straight to the highlight of the day, and perhaps the autumn. Just before mid-day a strange wheatear was seen at the south end of the island by one of our guests. After looking at some of their photos it looked like a good candidate for an Isabelline Wheatear, with an overall pale colour especially noticeable on the mantle, on the coverts and on the face. The face Pattern was very plain, it looked of a reasonable size and long legged, and most strikingly seem to have a thick black terminal band on the tail. The bird was searched for but was not found again. A few hours latter another party went out in search and one of our assistant wardens split off in another direction and stumbled across the bird, finally everyone could get into it. What a striking bird it was! After some more examination including seeing the pale under-wings, relatively paler primaries and secondaries and the tail pattern it was confirmed as Bardseys third Isabelline Wheatear!

Although all other sightings were over shadowed, other birds around the island included three Spotted Flycatchers, still a good count of 29 Goldcrests, nine Willow Warblers, 12 Chiffchaffs, 10 Blackcaps, singles of Garden Warbler, Common Whitethroat, and Reed Warbler, 21 Northern Wheatear, still high numbers of Robins with 18, 37 White Wagtails, three Grey Wagtails, 76 Meadow Pipits, four Dunlin, 12 Ringed Plovers, and some birds of prey including our first Merlin of the autumn, singles of Kestrel and Buzzard and two Sparrowhawks. 

Isabelline Wheatear