A day on St Agnes

We went to St Agnes yesterday. We were expecting another quiet day ……..

I visited the small St Agnes church next to Periglis beach to have a look at the stained glass windows. This is the original one over the altar.

This is a newer window designed and made by Oriel Hicks – a Scillonian artist – the Agnes Lighthouse

And this is the most recent window – gig rowers – also by Oriel Hicks

There were 3 ringed plovers on Porth Killier

And rather surprisingly a mandarin duck – which started off on the Pool and then flew to Porth Killier beach

The best bird of the day was this red-flanked blue tail (photo by Richard Taylor) – it was rather flighty but eventually we got some reasonable views. Interestingly a further two red-flanked blue tails were also recorded on St Marys at the same time. There have only been five records prior to these sightings.

During our walk on Gugh we found a dead water rail

Amazingly just before we found the dead water rail we heard that an Arctic Warbler had been found dead after it had collided with a window at the Lighthouse on St Agnes. On closer examination it was determined that the bird was in fact either a Pale-legged Warbler or a Sakhalin Warbler. Either way this bird is a first for Britain and the Western Palaearctic! Of course nobody can include it on their lists as the poor bird was dead. Very odd to think we were bird watching 500 metres away from where the bird was found at the time it died …….

The easterly winds are working their magic!