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| Myrtle Warbler |
Thursday 6th October
I awoke yet again to the windows being pelted with rain as they rattled around in the wind. After a very leisurely breakfast I drove a few hundred yards up the road to where a grassy field was home to a few hundred common waders. The damp field seemed to be teaming with worms and the Lapwing, Snipe, Redshank and Ringed Plover were in a feeding frenzy, never having to move more than a few inches for the next mouthful. I guess they were all working hard laying down fat reserves for the leaner months to come. I applied the tried and trusted method of using the car as a hide and spent a couple of hours watching the wader spectacular and taking photos.
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| Common Snipe |
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| Ringed Plover |
I then drove to Lerwick for a coffee and some present shopping before spending some time in the harbour photographing Black Guillemots or Tystie as they are known locally. As the name suggest, they are predominantly black when in summer plumage but moult into a not unattractive combination of white and grey in the winter. The feet are coral red in both plumages. My birding friend Jeremy once described them very aptly as looking like a comfortable pair of slippers!.
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| Tystie |
I next drove back north to a place called Lunna Kirk where a Barred Warbler was being reported. The rough road led to an old church and graveyard overlooking an exposed and windswept rocky coast. It really felt as barren and as inhospitable as you can get. A ruined derelict house added to the bleak atmosphere of remoteness and abandonment.
Behind a stone wall a short way from the church someone had planted a row of Sycamores. They seemed very incongruous in the howling wind, bearing no resemblance to our Sycamores in the south. Rather they looked like large and distorted bonsai tress where most of the growth was below the short wall, almost as if they were hunkering down from the wind. Surely, I thought, there can’t be a Barred Warbler in there but when a bird ends up on Shetland its choice of accommodation is very limited. Sure enough a wind-swept looking bird appeared low down moving restlessly through the trees on what seemed like a pointless circuit before flying to an adjacent nettle patch and then finally up the road to another small patch of tress. In the furious wind it was impossible to hold the camera still so, as is becoming a habit, here is one I did earlier
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| Barred Warbler Titchfield Haven 2017 |
Friday 7th October
The weather was very much stuck in the same pattern as Friday dawned and I was planning a fairly relaxed days birding but Shetland had other ideas!
My plan was to visit Scalloway, the ancient capital of the Shetlands, where a King Eider had occasionally been seen out in the harbour. There was a small flock of common Eider in the harbour but no sign of the King Eider so I retreated to a local coffee shop for refreshments and checked the local WhatsApp groups for bird news.
Quite unbelievable, a second Myrtle Warbler had been found by the same birder just half a mile or so from the first! Like everyone else, my immediate thoughts were surely this is the first bird that had relocated overnight. This second bird was, however, much more clearly marked than the first and the birds had been seen concurrently at the two sites proving without a shadow of a doubt that there were indeed two birds.
Some 30 minutes later I was again parking at the village hall in Bigton and heading for a small group of trees by a brook some 10 minutes’ walk away. The warbler showed quite well almost immediately. It was working its way up and down the tree line making short flycatcher like flights to grab insects very much in the manner of the first bird. I positioned myself in a good looking spot and waited for the bird to return on its rounds. It showed extremely well in-between heavy rain showers and I was able to get some pictures that I was very satisfied with.
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| Myrtle Warbler |
After a couple of hours I made my way back to the car and onto a local café for some warming soup and a cup of tea. With nothing else new in I decided to go back to Lunna Kirk to see if I could photograph the Barred Warbler.
As I arrived I checked the Shetland WhatsApp groups and could not believe my own eyes! Bloo*dy hell -an American Least Bittern had been found down on the south coast!! Now this is as rare as its gets and was a potential UK first for this beautiful diminutive North American member of the Bittern family.
Cue an absolutely life threaten drive south to Scousbrough Beach. I could tell which of the other cars along the way also had birders in them by the hazardous way they were driving. I abandoned the car and ran towards the beach where there were perhaps 100 birders. The Least Bittern had walked off the road where it was first found into some tall grass. A scope had been set up and people queued to get a brief view of this incredible bird.
The Least Bittern is one of the smallest bitterns in the world measuring only some 10 to 14 inches in length and on average weights a mere 85 grams. It is an elusive bird of large reedy marshes breeding in a wide range from Canada to Northern Argentina. Birds in the North of the breeding range migrate to the southernmost coasts of the United States and areas further south for the winter. Its underparts and throat are white light brown streaks while its face and the sides of its neck are light brown. It has penetrating yellow eyes matching a yellow bill.
It was quite clear that the bird was in a very poor way and the decision was made to take it into care. The bird was carefully picked up and shown to those present before being put into a cardboard box and taken away. The next day the sad but perhaps inevitable news came in that it had perished overnight. It was very emaciated and was not strong enough to recover in care.
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| Least Bittren |
Saturday 8th October
Saturday dawned strangely silently – there was no wind! After another leisurely breakfast I checked out of the St Magnus Bay hotel and made my way back to the coast at Wester Quarff where the King Eider was again being reported. I found a group of distant Common Eider but the King Eider was not with them. They drifted around the headland back to Scalloway so I drove around the bay, parked in Scalloway harbour and scoped the sea. There were no Eider but I found a Red-necked Grebe, the first I’ve seen for a number of years and also a Slavonian Grebe which had been in the harbour for a few days.
I eventually made my way back to Lewick, spent some time in the harbour photographing the Tystie again and then made by way to the ferry terminal for another bumpy overnight sail back to Aberdeen.
With five new UK life ticks, Swanson’s Thrush, Pechora Pipit, Lanceolated Warbler, Myrtle Warbler and Least Bittern, the trip had widely exceeded my expectations. I suspect any subsequent birding holidays in Shetland will be a bit of an anti-climax after this one!
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