North Ron trip 23-24 August 2014, Part 2

Hmmm, are you thinking, "Wait a minute, he ended Part 1 by leaving the island. How the heck is there a Part 2?"

Well, the first episode was more about mood and atmosphere, whilst this final instalment concerns birds... mostly birds.

For this visit, Our Lass and I limited ourselves to pottering around the south of the island, foregoing the culinary pleasures of the North Ronaldsay Trust's cafe, located in one of the former lighthouse keeper's cottages at the far end of the island.

Not for us a full-English-breakfast-fuelled frantic dash to the most northerly cafe in Orkney, nor even a mad calorie-burning twitchfest to try to locate the Common Rosefinch that had been seen with the local finch flocks for several days. Nope, although we did partake of a full English, instead we ambled passed Holland House, down to Bridesness and then back again via the beach of South Bay. After a light salad lunch at the Obs, we maintained a slow pace down to the pier and around the south west coast, before heading inland to the airfield and our flight back to the sprawling mega-tropolis of Kirkwall.

But banish such urban thoughts from your mind and simply enjoy a few photos of feathered and fleeced fauna, glimpsed and garnered on our perambulations of this picturesque isle.

Purple Sandpipers, Calidris maritima, near Twingness

I suspect that this is a Willow Warbler, Phylloscopus trochilus, at Bridesness

Sanderling, Calidris alba, in South Bay

A juvenile Ringed Plover, Charadrius hiaticula, in South Bay

Fulmar, Fulmaris glacialis, over dunes at South Bay

Several young Barn Swallows, Hirundo rustica, waiting to be fed at South Bay

North Ronaldsay sheep, Ovis sp., near Twingness

Snipe, Gallinago gallinago, in Gretchen Loch