Pechora pipit - 4th for the Faroes
What a day. Now Mads Bunch has been birding the Faroes for 15 days. We’ve had good days, bad days, and very bad days. Easterly winds have almost been absent and most days the number of warblers could be counted on one or two hands.
But birding on the Faroes is simple amazing and this morning we went out to give Mads a proper farewell. The forecast didn’t look terrible for once and the first check at Sumba revealed 6 blackcaps and 2 chiffchaffs and a very late arctic tern – so some warblers had made landfall.
In flight pechora!
William Simonsen and Svenn Justinussen from the faroese ornithological society had joined us. So we wanted to relocated the possible northern harrier that we had seen the previous days. So we spent a few hours in Sandvík, but we didn’t see the bird. But Mads checked the gardens and found bambling, barn swallow, garden warbler, willow warbler and blackcap. Surely some birds had arrived.
So we headed to Hvalba. I checked some gardens very briefly and suddenly the bomb dropped. I found a pechora pipit in a tree. Søren, Willian and Svenn were close by and saw then bird. Søren then called Mads on the walkie and he came running like lightning and caught up with the bird. And we got tremendous views down to 10 meters distance. What a cracking bird! But even at close range the primary projection was almost impossible to discern.
Pechora fighting meadow pipit
We enjoyed the pipit for 20 minutes and then Mads found a yellow-browed warbler and a lesser whitethroat that had just come in from the ocean and new chiffchaffs kept turning up – FINALLY NEWS BIRDS ARRIVING. And of course two classic goldfinches provided the icing on the cake.
Barred warbler with its back against the wall - will it survive the night?
We then checked the villages south of Hvalba and found another yellow-browed warbler in Sumba, barred warbler in Hov and good numbers of blackcaps and chiffchaffs and a few garden warblers.
All in all a proper farewell to Mads!
Birdingfaroes 