Day 25

 Sunday May 19

A few good birds have turned up this week, we thought we'd try and catch up with one or two. Smerclate in South Uist was the first destination. We don't know this area at all well, having only visited on the way to Eriskay. Loch Smerclate is on the south west corner of the island, overlooking Eriskay and Barra. 

The causeway to South Uist passes through Loch Bee where a Mute Swan was escorting her newly hatched youngsters on their first expedition.  Irresistible,



Mistakenly, we scanned the loch first, it seemed a much more likely habitat for the bird we sought. Redshank, Mallard and Mute Swan is all we found here. We then repaired to the machair edging the rocky seashore where we found a few Dunlin, Sanderling and Black-tailed Godwit. Despite poor phone reception, Ian and Sue soon put us right. Thank you. We needed to drive up a sandy track as far as we could go. Here we sat, looking over a large patch of rotting seaweed, heaving with small waders.Where was the pesky bird. A fly-over Hooded Crow caused all the waders to fly away in a panic. Eventually, they returned, I was lucky enough to be watching part of the concrete slipway where the Pectoral Sandpiper landed briefly, before losing itself in the seaweed once more. Both of us had tickable views.

On to the southern end of The Range in Benbecula. By now, the sun had gone and the light was awful. Following Google Maps instructions, we eventually found our way past the MOD buildings and onto the machair. west of Loch Bee. Oh no. There were  at least ten Golden Plover scattered on the machair a fair distance away. I was able to scope the birds, if not photograph them, locating the American Golden Plover was not easy.

 

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