• When here in the Outer Hebrides and looking at a bird, have you ever wondered how rare it is? The status of all species can vary enormously from island to island. How rare is Shoveler on Barra, has Stock Dove been seen on Harris, does Dotterel occur on Benbecula in the autumn, and how common is Blue Tit on North Uist? Well, fret no longer! The Status and Distribution of birds here on the Outer Hebrides has been completely updated and summarised for every species and each of the main islands and outliers. Available as an online resource at https://status.outerhebrides-birdreports.org/ or via our shop

    New - now available as an ebook

Local Rarity 30th December 2017

Bruce

Senior Member
17 snow buntings still by the airport on Barra today plus an unseasonal pied wagtail in the car park there and a juv Iceland gull on the beach. A lone fieldfare was at Northbay.
 

YvonneB

OH Bird Recorder
A Coot was on the loch behind the Co-op at Daliburgh this afternoon.

A small number of birds were ringed today here at Askernish, including a re-trap of a Starling that was first ringed here in the garden on 28th September 2010 as a juvenile bird. This makes it 7 years old and it had previously been retrapped in 2011 and 2012.

The longevity record for a Starling is just over 17 years so it has a way to go yet but still doing well!

As a matter of interest I had a look at our records to see if this was the oldest Starling that we'd encountered and it is.
Others over 5 years old were:-

Starling ringed 22/11/2010 as juvenile female - retrapped in 2012 and 2015
Starling ringed 16/09/2010 as an adult male - retrapped in 2016 and 2017 (so also 7 years old this year)
Starling ringed 14/06/2012 as juvenile female - retrapped in 2013 and 2017
 
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