A rare bird landed on Rum yesterday and was spotted by one of our birders here who sent the message out to the twitching world. Apparently it was a MEGA. We realised last night that this might mean an influx of birdy types on the ferry today and there was hurried emails being sent about a pop up teashop to make money for the RCA / provide refreshments for the hoardes.
I offered to do soup, bread, cakes and was all set to take stuff down to the hall when Ali contacted me to say it would probably be better just at their house as she suspected people would not actually want to move from her garden anyway. So I went down there instead. Ady and Sandy fixed a bit of Gav and Laura’s roof which had blown lose.
Ali and I had various visitors through the morning until the onslaught of twitchers arrived. It was mad! About 35 of them, all in their camouflage gear with huge lenses and scopes. They didn;t want to talk to anyone, kept glaring at us all when we made a noise and were dashing from one side of the house to the other as people whispered that it might be this way. It was just like the Big Year film! It was all very tense and Ali and I had been watching it all morning hopping about feeding out of the window but then it had disappeared and we feared it may not come back out while the crowd were there. But then it was spotted in a tree and they all got their pictures, ticked off their books and visibly relaxed. Enough to have tea, coffee, soup, rolls and cake and fill our donations pot with cash 🙂
They all left and we all returned to our normal lives. Davies and Scarlett who managed to not see the dove anyway went home, Ady (who also didn’t see it) and I went to finish processing laundry and wander round the village a bit while it was all done. We loaded it all up, grabbed a couple of sacks of firewood too and came home.
This evening I had a Small Isles Community Council phone meeting which lasted an hour but was interesting and worth doing. Lots on the agenda including things like Calmac ferry issues, NHS doctor provision etc so we talked about all that. Then I joined the others for Haggis for dinner. An inspired dinner we have not had since we moved here despite all really liking it. Ady offered me a dram of his whisky afterwards and as I don’t like whisky I added ginger wine to it which made it very palatable but probably not very sensible!