A stormy night

Last Sunday evening/early Monday morning (4/5 Aug) in light of the few Storm Petrels we had caught so far, we decided to try out a new site on the East side of South Ronaldsay to see if we could do any better.

The short answer was 'No'. We didn't manage to catch a single bird, which was quite disappointing especially when we found out that Al had caught 56 birds at his site near Birsay in the NW corner of West Mainland the same evening.

On a positive note we did get to see an aurora, the first of the autumn/winter season and quite a few shooting stars.

So on Wednesday evening (7 Aug) Colin decided that he was going to give it a go from a site in Deerness that had been a good spot in previous years.

Stan and I met up with him and just before midnight we had the net setup and were ready to see what happened.

We didn't have to wait long as just after midnight we had our first two birds. Each net round produced more birds. By 2am things were starting to slow down and the final net round was an empty net so we decided to wrap up for the session.

In total we caught 20 birds, 19 new ones and 1 control.

Storm Petrel

After a productive session we are going to give it another go on at our South Ronaldsay sites, so watch this space to see how we get on.