Swainson's Thrush
Wednesday 28th September
I left home bright and early and headed north for my hugely anticipated 12 day birding trip to Shetland. I had debated whether to drive straight to the ferry in Aberdeen, a drive of some 470 miles from home, or split the journey. In the end I decided to split the journey on the basis that, as it was October, there would be some good birding somewhere on route. With logistics at home to sort out I had to make this decision in advance rather than leaving it to the last moment. As it turned out nothing mega was reported on route prior to my departure so I decided to stop off in Northumberland and bird some new locations for me. As I drove north the weather deterred and by the time I arrived in Northumberland the rain was torrential.
I parked up at the St Mary’s Island car park just north of Newcastle to look for two Lapland Buntings that had been reported as showing well. I met a local birder who directed me to where the birds had been seen the previous day but I could not find them. I suspect they were hunkered down somewhere out of the wind and rain. So I decided to move on to the Druridge Bay county park and bird the series of freshwater pools adjacent to the coast. After getting lost a couple of times I eventually found an old brick hide overlooking a promising looking wetland area with a scape. For once my timing was impeccable as the heavens immediately opened and the rain came down in stair rods. This did not perturb a small group of waders feeding in the muddy margin and as I scoped the flock I found two smart looking juvenile Curlew Sandpipers and a Little Stint in amongst the Dunlins. I took a few photos but the rain and very low light levels rendered the pictures rather washed out and dull. With no sign of the rain stopping I retired to a local travel lodge to take shelter from the harsh northern weather.
Thursday 29th September
Fortified by a substantial cooked breakfast, I commenced my journey to Aberdeen. I debated whether to go and see a Baird’s Sandpiper, a bird already on my UK list, north of Aberdeen but I decided to go straight to the ferry terminal. With hindsight I felt that I should have driven straight to Aberdeen from home and used my extra day birding Shetland .. next time!
Ewan, my birding friend from Oxfordshire, had kindly given me the contact details for the administrators of the Shetland birding WhatsApp groups. They have three groups for common, scarce and rare birds. The fact that Yellow-browed Warblers are considered common birds tells you everything you need to know about how wonderful birding on Shetland can be. Late afternoon a report came through of a Swainson’s Thrush on the island of Yell, a mega rare American vagrant, that was my destination for day one on Shetland sorted for me then!
The ferry from Aberdeen to Shetland goes via a stop off in the Orkneys and takes a weather dependent 12 to 14 hours. The captain came onto the pa system to announce that the start of the crossing should be “fairly calm”, but gales with wind gusts of up to 65mph, were expected for the latter part of our crossing. Now, if you know anything about boats in rough seas, you want to be in the middle of the boat. In rough seas the boat acts as a fulcrum, i.e like a seesaw, pretty stable in the middle but going up and down at either end. I booked my crossing and accommodation very early on 1st January and I suspect they fill up the overnight cabins from the front of the boat back, hence I was in the very front one. I did actually manage to sleep through most of the crossing but parted company with my bed a couple to times when it dropped away from me, an experience a bit like going over a hump too fast in your car.
Friday 30th September
I took breakfast in the ferry restaurant and was pleased to see that the Swainson’s Thrush was still being reported. I drove off the ferry and through Lerwick into the face of the howling gale. Yell, the location of the Thrush, is an island off the north coast of mainland Shetland served by a 30 minute car ferry from Toft. The 40 minute drive from Lerwick was “interesting” with the car buffeted continuously by the gales. As I approached Toft I saw a report that, due to the very adverse weather, the ferry would stop running soon! Now, I’m not known for doing the sensible thing, rather I have a family reputation for being very reckless, but getting stranded on Yell and spending the night sleeping in my car was very unappealing indeed. So I gave it a miss and drove to my accommodation at the St Magnus hotel in Hillswick where I had stayed for a few days the previous year.
On route I saw large numbers of Ravens, Hooded Crows and Rock Doves swirling around and fighting the wind. Ravens are common on Shetland their croaking call being the backing track to any outing. Rooks, Jackdaws and Carrion Crows are very rare birds of Shetland so any large black corvid will almost certainly be a Raven. Our southern Carrion Crow is replaced by the Hooded Crow in Shetland , a bird currently considered to be a separate species.
If you need a hotel on Shetland, I can highly recommend the St Magnus Bay hotel for its warm welcoming ambience and excellent food, infinitely preferable in my humble opinion to the cold and unfriendly Sumburg hotel.
After settling into my room I tried to venture out for some local birding but with the wind now gusting around 70 mph I could hardly stand up so retired to my room to read. After a couple of hours I became aware that the wind had dropped so I ventured out to try and find a Great Grey Shrike which had been reported just up the road from the hotel. It was not in the garden where it was previously located but I soon found it further up the road perched on a barbed wire fence, regularly dropping down to feed on creepy crawlies in the grass below. It was a little distance but I fired off a few shots and then as the light began to fade retired back to the hotel for a beer and hearty meal.
Shrikes are some of my favourite birds. The adult birds of all species are very attractive and they all have the handy habit of perching out in the open in full view. They are all scarce birds in the UK but the Great Grey Shrike is the commonest with a small number overwintering mainly in southern England, The phenology of the Great Grey Shrike is complex and subject to ongoing debate with two full species currently recognised, the Lesser and Greater Great Grey Shrikes, accompanied by numerous subspecies. One of these subspecies, a south-eastern Russian race, Lanius excubitor homeyeri, which is often referred to as Homeyer's Grey Shrike, has never officially been recorded in the UK. It turned out that the Hillswick Shrike is an excellent candidate for the first record of this sub species. Armed with this knowledge, I checked my pictures much more carefully and could indeed see some of the characteristic features of Homeyer’s – that will teach me to pay more attention next time! There is talk of Homeyers being spilt as a species in its own right in the future so you never know it could be an armchair UK tick for me.
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| St Magnus Bay Hotel |
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| The Viking stained glass window in the hotel |
Saturday 1st October
Saturday dawned bright but blustery and after breakfast I headed north to Toft to get the ferry to Yell where the Swainson’s Thrush was thankfully still being reported. The Thrush was located on the West coast of Yell, the first land it would have seen after its wind assisted journey from the east coast of North America, in a small wind beaten garden that is so typical of Shetland. There are no native trees to speak of in Shetland so most birds turn up in gardens such as this. I parked up and met my birding friend from Nottingham, Ian, who told me that he had seen the bird but it was now buried somewhere in a garden viewable from the adjacent road. After a while the Thrush flew from this somewhat overgrown garden to one close by with an open lawn and the bird started feeding in typical Thrush fashion on the grass.
With only 45 UK records to the end of the end of 2020 this is a very rare vagrant and was a UK tick for me. My Shetland birding was off to a very good start!
It is a member of the American Thrush genus Catharus and is named after William Swainson, an English Victorian ornithologist. It breeds in the coniferous forest of Canada and the northern states before migrating to south America for the winter. It is an understated but none the less attractive bird with a white-dark-white underwing pattern characteristic of all Catharus thrushes. Adult birds are brown on the upperparts while the breast is lighter brown with darker spots. They have pink legs and a light brown eye ring. At some 16 -20 cm they are noticeably smaller than our native UK Thrushes
After spending a couple of hours with the Thrush I drove over to Mid Yell on the east coast where two Artic Redpolls had been reported, more on these delightful fluff balls in later blogs. Fortified by a coffee from the local shop I spent some time searching for them to no avail although I did find the first of many Yellow-browed Warblers that I would see during my holiday
TO BE CONTINUED
Nice one!
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