A close but no Cigar-tailed Tit from Durness today! #highlandbirds #birdingscotland

A 1st winter male SIBERIAN RUBYTHROAT caught on North Ronaldsay!!! #RareBirdsUK #BirdingScotland #OrkneyBirding

Beavers have returned to Glen Affric, 400 years after their extinction in Scotland :beaver: A family of five beavers and a beaver pair were released last Friday at two sites on Loch Beinn a’ Mheadhoin in the Glen Affric National Nature Reserve 🦫 Full story 👇 treesforlife.org.uk/beavers-rele...

Absolutely gobsmacked to witness massive raptor migration near Panama City this morning. Probably the most birds I've ever seen in my life! The video doesn't do it justice, there were clouds of them moving through. Nature is amazing. #birds #flyways

Well chuffed to add this to the 'self-found' list today..... Unfortunately, this bird has lost its tail, but this somehow just seems to add to its charm! #YellBirding #Shetland #RareBirdsUK

'“well over” 1,000 dead cranes have been found “in a short period of time” at a major resting place in Linum, Germany. “We have been working with many volunteers in managing this bird migration gathering place for 25 years & have never experienced anything like this,”' www.unmc.edu/healthsecuri...

Some pretty harrowing scenes of bird flu hitting the Common Crane population coming out of Germany! youtu.be/sRJeCLgzcKY

Finally got around the last few nights to editing photos from the Challenger Expedition to the continental shelf edge in September, as well as the previously mentioned Madeiran Petrels here are a few highlights...

It all kicked off yesterday afternoon on North Ron with a Radde’s Warbler trapped at the obs! And then a Northern Bullfinch caught at HH I didn’t think it could get any better until Alison and I found this Black-throated Thrush in a net during the roost catch! #BirdingScotland #OrkneyBirding

The White House currently being demolished to be used to make golf bunkers, what a time to be alive!

Scilly’s first EYEBROWED THRUSH in 32 years! A real Scilly ‘Golden Era’ grip back for those of us not fortunate enough, or old enough, to be around for the remarkable run of SIX through the 80s & 90s. A proper stonker of a bird & a long overdue mega eastern thrush for the islands! #ScillyBirds

Bit of excitement on the CEFAS Endeavour this morning when we saw this Fea's-type Petrel 17nm off the Cornish coast as we were heading towards Lundy to shelter for the next day or so. #ukbirding #birds

3 Northern Long-tailed Tits showing well on Yell today. Got a feeling there may be a few decent photos of these birds appearing, as they're very accommodating! 😎👍 #YellBirding #Shetland #RareBirdsUK #Birdguides

💥'Northern' Long-tailed Tit💥... 3 of these stunning birds seen in fading light this evening in West Yell. Cheers to Adrian for spreading the word!...... Genuinely one of my most wanted birds since I first picked up the original Collins Guide! 😍😎👍 #YellBirding #Shetland #RareBirdsUK

Cropped clip from the trail cam

The mosquito Culiseta annulata which made the headlines recently with the first Iceland records, on my moth sugar last Friday in Strathspey! #teammoth

Eastern Common Nightingale, Rattray Head #birds #birdingscotland

A remarkable Eastern Nightingale at Rattray Head yesterday. It's behaviour was most un-nightingale-like, sitting in the open and pumping its tail. A real crowd-pleaser!

The Eastern Nightingale from yesterday, arriving on scene even more surreal than usual even at Rattray with heavy smoke drifting across the area, hooded figures, late 90's techno blaring and an air raid siren soundtrack! Luckily bird unfazed... #birdingscotland

Boom 💥 lightening strikes twice @kevinshetland.bsky.social and I have just found Isabelline Wheatear on Fair Isle. @fairislebirdobs.bsky.social #UKBirding

After a dawn raid on the Point, this little beauty was cowering in the buckthorn on my birding walk back, not far south of the Breach at Spurn. Thomas Willoughby’s brilliant pic. Bird of a lifetime. A British tick as well 😂

Featuring a Desertas petrel that stunned scientists by chasing a tropical storm (see their incredible chase mapped here!), tiny nightingales that cross the Sahara twice a year, and Bewick's swans that have changed their stopovers and diet

October moths Even now it’s not too late to cling to the last remnants of summer and go looking for moths. These are some of the species that can still be seen in Finland & elsewhere in Northern Europe, drawn after my own photos.

Oh lawdy...!!! White-throated Needletail showing a bit well here at Bempton RSPB reserve @rarebirder.bsky.social @birdguides.bsky.social

Having had a quiet 5 days birding in the Spurn area, news broke of a White- Throated Needletail further North. We dashed to Hornsea Mere hoping to find it there when it was then reported further North at Bempton cliffs. 35 minutes late and Bingo. What a cracking bird. A borrowed pic attached.

Needletail memories! #birdingscotland

#ElectricBus firm #Ember has announced a new route between #Glasgow and #Inverness starting October 22 that will also stop in #Dunblane, #Perth, #Pitlochry, #Dalwhinnie, and #Aviemore. There will be 12 return trips per day, with three of the services being non-stop between Glasgow and Inverness.

When we found the Dusky Warbler on Shetland last week it was having a tack-athon with two blythi Lesser Whitethroats in the same trees, here is a recording of one of them... #birdingscotland

UK Government arms exports to Israel hit a 'record high' in recent months, analysis has found

This can’t have happened many times before, all three sword grasses to sugar in one garden on one night! Dark Sword Grass, Red Sword Grass and Sword Grass!! #teammoth @migrantmothuk.bsky.social

A freshly stranded By-The-Wind Sailor, one of many pushed ashore by strong winds on the west coast of Barra today. Lots of obvious specimens of 6-8cm scattered over the beaches but also masses of tiny ones down to 5mm in length spread along the strandline. #Beachcombing

NEW: Extraordinary scenes in Amsterdam this afternoon (Sunday, Oct 5). An estimated 250,000 bring the city to a standstill; people all wearing red to show solidarity with Palestine 🇵🇸 (🎥 Ahmed Zantac)

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

We were hoping that the storm would deliver something from the west. And it did. Swainson’sThrush Foula today. Very difficult to get close too, hence the most record or record shots. #RareBirdsUk

A windy night in the #Cairngorms with our @ukecn.bsky.social weather station located at 700 m recording a gust of 106 mph and sustained winds of 75 mph as #StormAmy rolled through. That’s our highest recorded gust since Dec 2011, 14 years ago!

Freshly ashore today and covered in barnacles, this Coconut on the west side of Vatersay is the only transatlantic vagrant we've found so far this week. #Beachcombing

Another find with John Lowrie in “challenging” weather conditions, a Dusky Warbler! 💥

#donegalbirding A lifer today for some of the county’s most enthusiastic and experienced birders - this county-first Swainson’s Thrush should have been heading from Canada to South America, not Málainn Mhóir (Malin More), Gleann Cholm Cille (Glencolumbkille). Photo @delboydonegal.bsky.social

A day off isle today seeing the incredibly showy Radde’s Warbler at Valyie on Unst and the Short-toed Lark at a random spot on Yell! #birdingscotland #shetland

Grey-Cheeked Thrush trapped and ringed @lundybirds.bsky.social this morning. @birdguides.bsky.social @rarebirder.bsky.social

Yellow-browed Bunting trapped, ringed and released at the Swannery. It's flown to the hedge which runs alongside the Swannery grounds and the bird may be viewable from the permissive path heading west from Grove Lane.

21 years (😬) since I found my first, delighted to find this Eastern Subalpine Warbler with John Lowrie Irvine on Whalsay, Shetland today!

Just watched a Peregrine chase a flock of Pink-footed Geese and then take one down! Seem to to remember reading about previous records of hunting geese (Barnacle?) in the Derek Ratcliffe book but never witnessed it! 🤯

Just back from a pelagic trip out to the Whittard Canyon area on the continental shelf edge with @scillypelagics.bsky.social @scottinscilly.bsky.social @nomadbirder.bsky.social Madeiran Storm Petrel reclassified from MEGA!!! to scarce summer visitor in one evening with 84 counted last night! 😂

YELLOW-BROWED WARBLER KALXON 🔥🔥🔥🎸🎸🎸🚨🚨🚨Let the games commence 😂

The strong southeasterlies seem to have brought in a lot of Red Admirals, 34 in the garden mostly on sugared fence posts!

Usually going out to check the sugar for moths is a mundane affair but last night during the torrential rain it was chaos with moths everywhere! Migrants were downed and residents out in big numbers, I had some help with the survey… #teammoth

One of the Convolvulus Hawk Moths is out tonight in the torrential rain feeding away, hardier than I thought they would be!. Here is another video from a drier night showing the hot areas of the moth more accurately, you can see the cold antennae easily! #teammoth

Balearic Shearwaters rarely stop when you see them in Highland, so was delighted to watch this one feed in a Kittiwake and Arctic Tern feeding frenzy just offshore today! Tarbat Ness aka The Bridges of Toss in the background... #highlandbirds

Spent hours being spellbound by Convolvulus Hawk Moths last night as they nectared on Nicotiana plants in my highland garden!. Up to 3 feeding at a time, their entire abdomens glowing red hot in the thermal from flight muscle use!! #teammoth @migrantmothuk.bsky.social @savebutterflies.bsky.social