All photos in this blog are curtsey of my birding buddy – Nick Truby . The absence of birding and hence blogs recently can be explained thus -Covid! Having successfully avoided it over the past 4 years, Carolyn and I finally succumbed. We think we either caught it during a number of recent hospital appointments or, more likely, at our local vets where the receptionist was wearing a mask and coughing quite a lot. It hit us both pretty hard and a week before I was due to go on my autumnal birding trip to Shetland I was convinced that I would not be able to make it as I was completely wiped out and could not imagine doing a 450 mile drive. My ever suffering wife, Carolyn, agreed that I could go a day early and split the drive and by departure day I was feeling just about well enough to go with lots of recovery breaks. There are two possible routes I can take up to the ferry terminal at Aberdeen along either the west or east coast. I decided on the east coast route with an over