It might be you, or me, but actually it’s Mairi.

I’ve been checking my garden, and the local patches of open space with grass, to see whether amongst all the Starlings and their noisy hungry young, there might be a Rose-coloured Starling (aka Rosy Pastor). And so it was with some envy that I received this photo of two Rose-coloured Starlings in my inbox from Mairi who lives on the Isle of Lewis in the Western Isles

Mairi tells me she isn’t a birder, and had never heard of them until something popped up on social media about some birds nearby. She never thought they’d appear in her garden but …

… low and behold we have two.  They are so funny to watch – we have two feeders one with nuts and one with fat balls and they honestly scare away all the other wee birds to have it all to themselves.

This is the normal range of this species – it winters (blue) in India and breeds (yellow) in the very east of Europe but also in the ‘stans’.

So maybe these birds should be in Samarkand but they are near Stornoway. That’s quite an overshoot!

I’m envious – they could have stopped in east Northants.

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