If you are thinking about an autumn birding holiday in Shetland and have never been before, there is one thing you need to know, you will loose at least one day to the weather. Its not so much the rain, which you should expect to see a lot of, but the wind which can be absolutely brutal with speeds in excess of 50 mph commonplace. No right-minded bird will show itself to you in such conditions, preferring to shelter deep in the sparse vegetation.
Winds gusting to 65 mph were forecast for the last two days of our holiday leaving us thinking they would probably be a right off. Our ferry on the Wednesday night was being reported as “high probability of cancellation” on Monday and indeed was cancelled on the Tuesday. In such circumstances the ferry company try and get you on the next available ferry. This usually means as a walk on passenger with your car going separately on the freight ferry. To make matters worse there were no cabins available and the best we could do was two sleeping pods which in reality are glorified reclining chairs. The weather was also looking poor leaving us pondering whether the Thursday night passenger ferry would also be cancelled. The combination of a rough crossing and little sleep also did not sit well with a 450 mile drive straight off of the ferry. We also both had differing personal reasons why we needed to get home as close to the originally planned day as possible. We hence investigated flying back and were both amazed that aircraft were still flying in the strong winds. After a lot of debate and much analysing of the potential outcomes, we decided to fly back on Thursday night, stay in an airport hotel and pick the car up from the freight ferry on Friday morning if it ran.
The weather was so atrocious that we did not leave our accommodation on the Wednesday but Thursday was forecast to be birdable. Our flight was late on Thursday afternoon giving us a long morning for potential birding. As it turned out our delay was most fortunate indeed!
Our plan for the Thursday morning was to bird Hoswick, a small village with typical Shetland gardens, where Jeremy had found a Barred Warbler earlier in our holiday. We then planned to try and find a nearby previously reported Ring Ouzel to finish our holiday.
We parked at our usual spot at the visitors centre and embarked on our well trodden route around Hoswick village. This takes in a visit to the garden of the Orca Inn, a dilapidated ramshackle hotel which appears to have been closed for some time. We picked up nothing of note so walked on to bird along the close by burn. We had only been there for a few moments when a startling message appeared on the Shetland Birders rare birds WhatsApp group “Yellow Warbler, Hoswick at the Orca Inn”!!! I told Jeremy who just laughed and I had to show him the actual message on my phone as he naturally assumed I was joking! How could we have missed that!! We were quite sure it wasn’t there 10 minutes ago when we were there so it must have flown in from somewhere else in the village.
With just 6 UK records prior to 2020 this was an extremely rare vagrant to the UK! Amazingly, this was the second record on Shetland this autumn with the first being found on the island of Folua in early September.
The Yellow Warbler is exactly what is says on the tin an, eye burning bright yellow all over! Contrarily to its Uk 3 star mega rating, it is a comparatively common bird in North America, breeding right across Canada and the USA down to the Caribbean and south America. They all winter in South America. Its Latin name, Setophaga petechia, strangely translates as moth eater with a small red spot! Consistent with its very wide range there are a rather astonishing 35 recognised sub species. They are said to be one of the easiest of new world warblers to identify with the summer males in particular being the yellowest warblers wherever they occur. They are brilliant yellow below and greenish-golden above.
As we rushed back to the Orca Inn the more fortunate birders who were in the locality started to arrive. We joined the rapidly increasing crowd at the Orca Inn garden and stared at the sycamores we had searched so often in the previous week. For perhaps 30 minutes there was no further sign of the yellow bombshell and we started to fret that we would have to leave to drop our car off for the freight ferry without seeing it. Someone then re-found it in a tree further up the road from the Orca Inn but the mad rush of birders flushed it before we could get there. The crowd slowly dispersed around Hoswick searching for the bird when suddenly everyone shot up a road at the edge of the village that we had not explored before. With considerable relief, and that really is an understatement, both of us managed to lay our bins on the bird for a few moments before it was flushed again by the arriving crowd. After a few more flushes it eventually found some sanctuary in a more distant hedge underneath an old dry stone wall and intermittently showed quite well as it presumably searched for insects. I managed a few reasonable record shots before the warbler flew into a much nearer bush and for a tantalising 15 seconds perched comparatively out in the open. Wow just wow, this was pretty much as good as rare UK birding gets!
Shortly afterwards we made our way back to Lerwick harbour to drop our car off, totally elated by this grandstand finale to a fantastic birding holiday. Contrary to our worse fears our flight departed on time and after a comfortable night in the holiday inn at Aberdeen airport we took a taxi to the freight terminal and found our car waiting for us.
With 4 new UK lifers and many other scarce birds seen, autumn in Shetland had once again delivered in spectacular fashion!!
Footnote - My blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!
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