Fair Isle's summer wildlife

Back in late June I was invited up to Fair Isle by the RSPB to have a look at their new Puffin project. Due to fog we ended up getting stuck on the island for a couple of extra days but were well looked after thanks to the great generosity of David, Susannah and the team at Fair Isle Bird Observatory. Of course there are much worse places to be 'stuck' in mid-summer than on Fair Isle, and the wildlife did not disappoint.

• You can read my article on the RSPB's Puffin project here.

Quite a few Arctic Skuas around; most are dark morph birds on Fair Isle. One or two pairs had very young chicks.

Angel of Death aka Bonxie - 2016 looks to be a record year for them here

Puffins are just brilliant

Northern Wheatears are breeding everywhere on the island

I walked for ages looking for Heath Spotted Orchids before I realised why I had been missing them - they're absolutely tiny on Fair Isle, as the 10 cent coin demonstrates!

Plenty of Common Snipe displaying around the island but not often this photogenic

White goose spectacular

Prior to leaving, we'd all agreed that one of the primary aims of the trip would be to see the large flocks of snow geese that winter around California's central valley. And boy, they didn't disappoint! First taster was a flock of a few thousand Snow Geese seen by route 12, south of Sacramento and east of Rio Vista. There were a few hundred each of Pacific White-fronted and Ross's Geese mixed in as well as a couple of Aleutian Cacklers and a scattering of Sandhill Cranes to complete the scene:

Forcing ourselves away, we continued south towards Merced NWR, taking in a fabulous flock of sixteen Mountain Plovers along the intriguingly-named Sandy Mush Road as well as the odd American Kestrel along the way.

The weather had turned pretty foul by the time we reached Merced, but the Ross's Geese more than made up for it. Many thousands were in fields north of the reserve and, an hour or so before dusk, they all took to the air in a quite amazing spectacle - we estimated 30,000+ Ross's along with several hundred White-fronts and a handful of Snow as well as three-figure numbers of Sandhill Cranes. Add to that the thousands of waterbirds littered across the floods and it made for quite a special few hours, despite the wind and rain.

Over at the nearby San Luis these American White Pelicans also provided a nice distraction from the geese, as did a few Cat C Tule Elk.