Most years the RSPB Orkney Local Group organise a trip out to the small island of Auskerry. On Saturday 26th May, a group of 11 folk made the journey out and I was lucky enough to be able to accompany them.
Auskerry lies on the East side of the island group, just south of Stronsay. It is only ¾ of a mile long, with a small area of heathland in the centre with grassland and a rocky coast surrounding it, there are small cliffs on the west side. The Brogan family live on the island for ten months of the year and farm the island with North Ronaldsay sheep.
The day couldn’t have been better for the trip this year, calm, sunny and warm (in the past the trip has been cancelled due to the bad weather). On the hour long trip to the island, we passed a group of feeding guillemots, kittiwakes, shags and greater black backed gulls, with a beautiful pale phase Arctic Skua harassing the kittiwakes for their catch. Unfortunately no sign of any whales...
We were welcomed to the island by Simon Brogan and headed off in smaller groups to circumnavigate the coast.
We were hoping to be lucky with migrant birds and at first it didn’t seem too promising, with a single blackcap at the lighthouse and a robin. (Although, they were very nice to see!).
There are a couple of colonies of Arctic terns on the island (a conservative estimate of 200) which is a fraction of what once nested on the island. However, there are lots of black guillemots around the coast.
We stopped at the north of the island for lunch, with a raft of about 40 puffins on the sea in front of us and a few circling overhead!
The highlight of the day was a very smart looking male red backed shrike hawking for insects at the Brogan’s house. A whitethroat was also sculking around the bushes.
Other sightings included: plenty of eider ducks around the island, common sandpiper, ravens with 2 newly fledged chicks, a small flock of turnstone and purple sandpiper.
In all we had about spent 4 hours on Auskerry but it was such fantastic weather we could have spent much longer on the island!