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| Rose-coloured Starling |
Our Shetland adventure started when Jeremy arrived at my house at 7 am on Friday 24th September. My Landover was involved in an altercation with a large lorry occupying more than the full width of the single track road by our house the previous week so we were using a curtesy car from the garage to get us to and from Aberdeen airport. More on this later!
We planned to break our journey with some on route birding and our first decision was whether to take the more direct westerly route straight up the M6 or the longer easterly route with the option of birding one of the Yorkshire hotspots. A Wilson’s Phalarope was the attraction on the westerly route but we decided to try for one of the Pectoral Sandpipers in Yorkshire.
The journey to Yorkshire was quite slow with the motorways already busy with Friday traffic. We hence arrived a little later than planned at a new site for both of us, Tophill Low nature reserve run by Yorkshire Water adjacent to the River Hull approximately 6 miles south-west of Driffield. We received bird location details from the visitors centre and made our way on the long walk around the reservoir to a bird hide overlooking a small lagoon where the Pectoral Sandpiper was located. The hide was facing south straight into the sun making birding and photography really problematic. Its amazing how many hides are situated in this far from ideal orientation almost as though those planning the hide location are unaware of the issue! Jeremy located the Pec Sand which was quite distant adding to the viewing issues. Time was pressing on and so, after watching the bird for a little while with no immediate indication that it was inclined to come closer, we decided to continue our journey towards Aberdeen. The chosen route was, in glorious hindsight, probably a mistake as it added some 100 miles and more than 2 hours to our journey time.
The Holiday Inn express that I had booked at the airport way back in the spring was somewhat mysteriously closed and our booking was transferred to the adjacent Crown Plaza, a stereotypically somewhat soleless airport hotel.
After breakfast exciting news emerged to wet our birding appetites. A very rare North American Rose-breasted Grossbeak had been found at Norwick on Unst in the far north of Shetland. Our short flight to Sumburg in the south of Shetland was uneventful and we were soon collecting our luggage and meeting our guides for the week, Dave and Holly, and the rest of the weeks Heather Lea tour participants. There were two minibuses with 4 birders plus a guide in one and 5 plus guide in the other. Jeremy and I ended up in separate buses and later discovered that, due to Covid, we were not allowed to change buses during the week! This was rather annoying as we wanted to sit together and would not have gone in separate buses at the beginning if were informed of this issue.
We picked up packed lunches from a local hotel and made our way to Lewick harbour where we had lunch and our first experience of birding in Shetland. There were numerous Shags close to the harbour wall and confiding Black Guillemots in rather attractive winter plumage, a sort of fluffy white and black which Jeremy very aptly commented looked like a pair of slippers!
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| Shags |
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| Black Guillmot |
The plan was to do some mainland birding for the rest of the day and then make an early start the next day to catch the 2 ferries to Norwick at the far north of Unst. Now herein lies the main issue of going on an organised tour rather then going it alone, the guides decide what birds you are going for when. I will come back to this at the end of my Shetland blogs when I look at the advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches but this is the main disadvantage amongst the many advantages of an organised tour. There is no doubt that if Jeremy and I were going it alone we would have gone straight for the Grossbeak on the Saturday.
After lunch we made our way to Aith, midway up the Shetland mainland, where a Rose-coloured Starling was associating with a flock of regular Starlings. This year has been a good year in the UK for Rose-coloured Starlings with multiple late summer and early autumn sightings. They breed in the steppes, semi-deserts and deserts of Central Asia and Southeast Europe and winter in India and tropical Asia. The adult is highly distinctive, with its pink body, pale orange legs and bill, glossy black head, wings, and tail. We soon located the bird in a garden on bird feeders. This was a foretaste of how much of the weeks birding would work. There are no trees and virtual no natural scrub on the island apart from that planted in gardens. Hence many of the birds were located in garden trees and bushes. In the harbour a family flock of Red-breasted Mergansers entertained us as they swam to and fro feeding on fish.
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| Rose-coloured Starling |
After an hour or so we made our way to Hillswick where we checked into the very pleasant St Magnus Bay hotel, our home for the next 3 nights. We went on a pre-dinner walk and Jeremy heard a calling Brambling which we subsequently located in a flock of Chaffinches again in garden vegetation. A heartly three course dinner, the standard for the week, and two pints of local ale had me in my comfortable bed and fast asleep before 10pm.
We were booked on the first ferry to Yell on Sunday morning so we had an early breakfast at 6:45 and departed the hotel by 7:15. The ferry ride to Yell is a short 30 minute or so crossing. A quick bit of sea watching mainly consisted of watching Gannets fishing and Shags avoiding the oncoming boat. The 30 or so minute drive across Yell, know affectionally by birders as the Yell dash, and a further 10 minute ferry ride soon had on Unst at the most northly point of both Shetland and the UK.
Our destination, Norwick on the north tip of Unst, has a deserved reputation as a rarity hot spot often being the first landfall for North American or European vagrants blown off course by strong westerly or easterly winds. Strong westerlies can delivery one or two American vagrants, most must surely perish at sea on the long unplanned journey, but easterlies can deliver a fall of scare and rare birds such as Yellow-browed Warblers. Hence, in general, birders prey to the gods of birding for easterlies.
The bird alert services were broadcasting the disappointing news “no sign of Red-breasted Grossbeak” and indeed despite searching by many birders present, of the Grossbeak there was no sign. It had either moved on or, given the exhausting but wind assisted journey of at least 4000 miles from the east coast of the states, perished overnight.
An attractive long tailed duck was bobbing up and down on the swell quite close to the shore. Somewhat unusually, at least to my eyes, the ducks winter plumage is more appealing than its summer breeding plumage. They go by the seemingly bizarre name of oldsquaw in North America.
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| Long-tailed Duck |
A Great Skua, one of a number we would see during our week, was coasting on the wind out at sea and over the cliffs.
A mixed flock of Sanderling and Ringed Plover were feeding on the shore-line. The Sanderlings always amuse me, resembling clockwork toys whizzing around following the sea as it recedes and then dashing away from the next oncoming wave to avoid a soaking, not always successfully!
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| Ringed Plover |
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| Sanderling |
A first winter Common Rose Finch, a bird somewhat bizarrely missing from my UK life list, was in amongst a flock of Sparrows feeding on what looked like a seeded wildflower bed and occasionally perching on a garden tree. The mature male birds have a brilliant rosy-carmine head, breast and rump but this first winter bird was, in truth, quite drab. They are common and widespread in continental Europe and Asia but are only passage vagrants to the UK. They are, however, spreading west and have once breed in the UK.
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| Common Rosefinch |
Soon it was time to depart for our two ferry journey back. On Yell we saw a small flock of migrating Whooper Swans. They breed in the subarctic with small numbers wintering in the UK. Whoopers and the somewhat similar Bewick’s Swan are easily distinguished from our common Mute Swan by their yellow as opposed to Orange bill.
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| Whooper Swan |
We were soon back in our hotel enjoying another delicious three course meal washing down with yet more Scottish ale!
To be continued ……….
Great stuff! :o)
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