• When here in the Outer Hebrides and looking at a bird, have you ever wondered how rare it is? The status of all species can vary enormously from island to island. How rare is Shoveler on Barra, has Stock Dove been seen on Harris, does Dotterel occur on Benbecula in the autumn, and how common is Blue Tit on North Uist? Well, fret no longer! The Status and Distribution of birds here on the Outer Hebrides has been completely updated and summarised for every species and each of the main islands and outliers. Available as an online resource at https://status.outerhebrides-birdreports.org/ or via our shop

    New - now available as an ebook

MisterT

Always Birding
2021 was a bumper year for our House Sparrows with 404 birds colour ringed, double our previous best. Unusually, new birds were ringed throughout the year including October to December, (32 in November is unprecedented) something that has not happened before and there are still a number of un-ringed birds.

Of those ringed 318 were juveniles indicating a very successful breeding season, the best yet by far. Although the majority left the study area soon after fledging, our core population numbered 83 in December, again the highest ever.

During the year we recorded 5,579 observations of birds in the study area.

This year we lost H75 who nearly became our longest lived bird, being just short of A39 by 48 days. H75, a male, was ringed on 05-June-2014 and survived 6yrs 282 days, and was seen, noted, and recorded on 1,507 occasions. N06 is now the oldest, ringed July 2016 and is 5 years 161 days.

Reports of birds seen elsewhere were again restricted to the Uists and Barra.

On South Uist, 3 birds were reported from a new site in Daliburgh (South - 4km), another 3 from Bornish (North - 5km), and 4 birds were seen at South Glendale (south 11km). One of the birds at South Glendale (O31) has been there since November 2017, arriving 3 months after fledging and is now our third oldest bird. There was one new site at South Lochboisdale (south – 7km) which many of our newly fledged birds favoured with reports of 22 individuals being present between August and October. One bird seen there later returned to Askernish.

There was only one report from North Uist, a bird (X52) was seen in a garden at Kyles Paible in September, a distance of 44km (north).

Two birds made the journey to Barra this year. T39, ringed here in the March was later seen at Cuidhir (22km) in the October. The other, a bird originally ringed at Brevig in February 2021 was caught here at Askernish (25km) in the February when a colour ring (T43) was added. This bird then made the return journey at some time, reappearing in Brevig in the June! This is the second instance of a bird making a return journey to Barra.

There has only been one instance of the “disappearing bird” this year. O55 was ringed in November 2017 and not seen again until it was re-trapped here this year in July, only to disappear and reappear again for one day in December! Just where does it go!

spuggy sightings uists 2021.JPG spuggy movements to barra 2021.JPG
Movement of House Sparrows in 2021 within the Uists and to/from Barra
 
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