August 2023 – Sightings

August 2023 – Sightings

16/08/2023

  • Arctic Skua (x3 over moorland)
  • Northern Eggar (a big fat caterpillar!)
  • Chevron moth, Grayling, Peacock and Red Admiral (a good day for lepidoptera!)
  • Pale Butterworth (a tiny plant in flower)

15/08/2023

  • Red-throated Diver (a barking flyover still feeding young at a moorland lochan)
  • Great Skua
  • Wheatear (a few still around)
  • White Wagtails (return migrants)
  • Sedge Warbler (feeding young in our garden)
  • Twite (x4)
  • Grayling butterflies (x2 on the rocky shoreline near our cottage)
  • Ling Heather, Bell Heather and Cross-leaved Heath (white-flowered forms of all three)

10/08/2023

  • Hen Harrier (ring-tail)
  • Volucella bombylans (a bumblebee mimic hoverfly)

09/08/2023

  • Abia nitens (a sawfly larva basking on a Devil’s-bit Scabious Flower – a first for Coll!)

07/08/2023

  • Long-tailed Tit (not a common bird out here)
  • Dark Green Fritillary (still a few on the machair)
  • Large Heath
  • Catoptria margaritella (having seen our first a week ago we’re now seeing them on every moorland walk!)
  • Heath Bumblebee
  • Moss Carder Bee

06/08/2023

  • Juvenile Snow Goose (reported with x4 adults – it seems our feral birds may have bred for the first time in several years)
  • Whimbrel (a return passage soloist)
  • Kittiwake (c500 on shoreline rocks)
  • Little Tern (flying over and calling in company with Arctic and Common Terns)
  • Juvenile Cuckoo
  • Woodpigeon (x3 together – unheard of Hebridean delights!)

01/08/2023

  • Catoptria margaritella (our first record of this possibly quite common day-flying moorland grass-moth!)

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