Fallen Apples
When you visit Islay in November and you have been more than one hundred times you do not expect to photograph a species that you have never filmed before. However, that is exactly what happened this November as I sat in my hide facing three Apple trees that had just shed their apples.Up to a dozen Blackbirds fed together and I waited in the hope of a Redwing or Fieldfare arriving but none appeared. Out of the blue a Blackcap appeared, then another and another until three males and two females were eating the apples! In summer Blackcap breed in the Islay woodlands but the Blackcap that I was filming were different, not in plumage, but where they had come from. It has recently been proved that the Blackcaps that we see in winter have come from Germany in contrast to the summer visitor Blackcaps who have now headed south to Africa. click here
Generally in wildlife encounters there are no second chances. Thirty years ago, in the Sound of Islay, I filmed an Otter as it came ashore with an Octopus in its mouth. Unfortunately I did not have a clear view of the feed so there was no lasting photo to remember it by. All that changed recently when I watched an Otter come ashore struggling to hold onto an Octopus which it shared with its young. Enjoy this weeks gallery as its unlikely to ever happen to me again! 
For only the third time in the last fifty years our garden was visited last week by a Grey Wagtail. It was a female with a difference – it had a white forked tail! What produced this unusual plumage is not clear but at least it will be readily recognisable should it return.