Snow Goose at Balranald 31 March 2013

I haven't done any long-distance twitching for a very long time, preferring birding and bird-finding (or more accurately failing-to-find-birding), but news of a Harlequin Duck just a short drive from our holiday home had me considering a trip to North Uist a good month before our planned holiday. Sense prevailed and I crossed my fingers and amazingly it became a long-stayer. So after a long drive, ferry journey and fairly unceremonious dumping of luggage I headed off to Balranald. As the light faded the difficulty of finding a small duck on a complex rocky shoreline hit home and we returned without a sighting - and we had not managed any of the supporting cast either...

The next morning was a different story entirely. Up early and determined not to dip twice, I was glad to see the female Ring-necked Duck (Scottish tick for me) was viewable on the loch south of the road on the way in. From the track to the beach a distant white goose heading north with a small number of Greylags turned for a lovely flypast and landed in amongst more Greylags in a nearby field (another Scottish tick - well its a little better than the definitely feral ones I've seen in among the small isles..).

If that wasn't enough, the Harlequin (life tick) showed briefly though distantly at Traigh Iar. And then on the way back to the car the Kumlien's Gull made its flypast. What a morning - and all before breakfast - suddenly I can see the attraction of twitching...