The Feather Fanatic: Time to get back on the blog!

It's been a long time since I've posted up here on the blog.... a lot has happened.... way too much to fit in to one post (or even several!) so I'll just have to give you the skinny..... I'm still working as a Field Ecologist for AECOM, but I've moved away from Caithness and I can now be found roaming around the mountains of Argyll. The new sites are great, (they actually have some birds which makes a nice change), and this month is the big one.... breeding raptors! Alas, I can't go into much detail as the work that I'm undertaking (location etc) has all got to be kept confidential, but there are some goodies and hopefully later on in the year I'll be able to put up an update as to how the breeding season went!

As for other bits and pieces, well, where to start?! I finally saw my Holy Grail bird on Orkney - a white-phase Gyr Falcon, then a year later was fortunate enough to find my own on my site in Caithness..... found a Fea's Petrel off Duncansby Head, saw Orcas, as well as Sperm and Humpback Whales, incredible northern lights, several excellent twitches (and some not so great!!), a couple of trips to Azerbaijan for work, a holiday in Romania, 2 consecutive October holidays in Shetland - the second proving the most fruitful with a stonking mega - Thick-billed Warbler..... continued training for my ringing C-permit, found quite a few decent birds on my local patch and did Tough Mudder for charity!! Rather than fill this entry with endless paragraphs, I'll just stick up photos instead... they'll probably tell a better story anyway!