Jack Snipe wins Award

I got back today, just timed it so that I failed to get any new birds, the Grey-cheeked Thrush departing after I arrived, and a couple of Olive-backed Pipits turning up when I got home. That's birding for you, but an excellent week nonetheless, with a slew of decent birds and excellent views of most of them, included the erasure of the dreaded "bvd"* from Barred Warbler after years of getting only glimpses. I'm still swaying gently even twelve hours after disembarking MV Hrossey, but a night in a real bed should sort me out.

I stayed on the islands for a mere five nights, but managed to rack up the following in terms of goodies:

Surf Scoter
Pallid Harrier
Barred Warbler x 3
Yellow-browed Warbler x 5
Bluethroat x 2
Red-breasted Flycatcher
Little Bunting
Black-headed Bunting
Common Rosefinch
Arctic(-type) Redpoll
Lesser Grey Shrike
eastern form of Lesser Whitethroat

That strikes me as pretty good, especially when you plonk a couple of Pectoral Sandpipers and a Sandhill Crane at the beginning of the list that were scored in-transit.

The birding up there is intense. Intense and prolonged concentration, and also intensely difficult in inclement conditions. I have come back a better birder, all you can ask really (apart from half-a-dozen ticks of course). Glimpes of Phylloscs are now enough to separate Chiff from Willow from Yellow-browed. A shape zipping across a gap between vegetation is easily assigned to Blackcap and so on. Quite a lot of fun.

The best bird saved itself until my final afternoon. I forget where exactly we were, checking another plantation. A Jack Snipe flew past Howard at waist height and plonked down in the grass quite close to use. Empoying stealth and fieldcraft I inched the camera towards it as I lay flat on my stomach along a fenceline. The bird didn't move, so I fired away. It decided on a little wander, and walked through the wire fence and then through Bradder's legs. Eh?

It soon became apparent that the bird either had no concept of people, or was so shattered it didn't care. Or perhaps both. Bradders stuck out his hand to see if the bird would walk across it. It did. Then we all wanted a go. Extraordinary behaviour. Pretty amazing from the bird as well. It wandered around between us utterly unconcerned - talk about an opportunity for study.

If anything, this birding trip to Shetland has been about confiding birds. Not necessarily rare ones, but exceptionally good views of pretty much everything we came across. Even of a Barred Warbler, which takes some doing. But despite the awesomeness of the Lesser Grey Shrike, the spendidness of the Arctic Redpoll, and the chirpiness of the Little Bunting, the bird I will remember and smile about, when asked about Shetland 2011, will be the Jack Snipe that walked across my hand and nearly hid in my lens hood.

* better view desired.

More of the Arctic-type Redpoll

What's not to like? Note the flank streaking, but also the clean white undertail coverts with only a thin central line. Mystery bird! You can click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

It looks very snowball-like in this photo in the shade. On a view like this you would easily convice yourself it had Arctic heritage!!



The pure white portion of the rump is actually quite narrow, there is significant streaking moving into the rump from the top and bottom.



Doesn't it look different in this shot? Much darker.



In sunlight, the bird took on a very milky appearance, like really weak coffee. This was more of a tan and white coloured bird than a grey and white one.



A large red forehead, very nice.

So is the bill small, or large? Or inbetween?

Birding on Unst

Another day, another island. Unst was one of my favourite places last year, so I was pleased that the team hadn't been before I arrived. After a quick dip of a Booted or Sykes's Warbler on the mainland, we were off up to Toft. Once again Yell didn't get a look in, the Prince Harry of birding islands, and we were straight over onto Unst to search for the Black-headed Bunting just yards from the quay at Belmont.

Tick and run. Well actually just run, as I saw one of these on Skerries last year. Whilst I'm not specifically complaining, if it could have been a different bunting sp that would have been handy. We carries on to Haroldswick where the Desert Lesser Whitethroat proved extremely obliging, and then onto Nordale, where the Bluethroat was a right sod. That said, it did lead us to the pine tree of birding dreams, which contained not only the Bluethroat, but a Yellow-browed Warbler, a Barred Warbler, a Goldcrest and a Willow Warbler. In between all this twitchery, we searched gardens and various little pockets of habitat, once again for little reward.

That's been the problem all week really - despite masses of effort, especially from this iris specialist, we have turned up very little. There hasn't been a hint of east all week, so very few birds are making it over. It has been very pleasant though, and the photographic opportunities have been great - having that extra dimension to this hobby means that even when pickings are slim I tend to have a good time. Amazingly I packed almost exactly the right amount of stuff, after agonising about what to bring for almost two weeks. Next time i won't bother with the waist belt and pouches, which have remained unused due to a plethora of pockets in my jacket being much easier, and ultimately more comfortable. Neither have I used my thermals, the weather here has been incredibly nice, verging on 20 degrees these past two days.

I'm leaving today on the evening boat, one last push for that self-found goody, and that'll be it for another year. Am I coming back? You betcha!

PS Mrs L, please can I come back next year?

Shetland perking up

I am happy to report a much easier and thus better day today. In common with other parts of the country, it is unseasonally warm, and so I have been birding the Northern Isles in shirt sleeves for most of the day. Although there is a distinct lack of cream tea action, it almost felt like Scilly at times today. Apart from the Northern Waterthrush of course. But we did see some birds, and see them well.

I won't go into an in-depth review of where we went and what we saw, but a Little Bunting on Whalsay was extremely nice, and the Arctic-type Redpoll performed beautifully. Note that I'm calling it "type" - upon consultation with Duivenduiuvijkjdjk there were several features which didn't quite stack up with classic exilipes. Now I'm no expert, but happily one was on hand in the form of Martin Garner. He too (and he didn't need a book!) thought that it wasn't quite a Coue's, but conceded that it was definitely a Redpoll more consistent with what is generally known as "Arctic" than anything else, possibly an Icelandic version. My own personal view is that it was very nice, and frankly, what else matters?

There is nothing wrong with being an ID guru of course. The world needs ID gurus, especially when it comes to Redpolls, it is just that I am not one (a guru or a Redpoll). I just like birds, and this one was brilliant. It got the old grey matter working, which is always nice, but the bottom line is that it was very round, very white, and very fluffy - much like a sheep - and it posed extremely nicely for photographs. Which when you've lugged 4kg of camera round all day is always appreciated.

Moving away from birds and onto Sheep-fanciers, here is a photo of the team. The comedy-pose was unintended - the movement of the Whalsay ferry caused the camera to slip mid-timer, so a quick adjustment was needed to ensure we all got in, and much merriment ensued. Little things.... 

From left to right: Bradders jnr, Bradders snr, moi, and then Howard.

Desperate Shetland birders start looking at sheep

No, we haven't seen one. In fact, we've seen nothing.

It's been bad, really bad. The wind-speed increased to 6,000mph overnight, and the few birds that were here got blown to Scandinavia. This is a right bugger if the truth be told, as ironically enough we want the birds currently in Scandinavia to be blown to us. To cut a long story short (on this blog?) we have been out all day and seen very little. When I tell you that the highlight was a singing Robin and a monumental 25 Woodpigeons, you will perhaps understand where I am coming from. I don't know if it's the wind that is preventing us from finding birds, or if there are simply no birds to find. After eight straight months of westerlies, I suspect the latter.

So so close, and yet so so far

But we tried, which is the important thing right? We tried western beaches for uber-flocks of Buff-breasted Sandpipers, Semipalmated Plovers and the like, and found the sum total of about eight Turnstone, six Ringed Plover and a Knot. We tried plantation after plantation, driving about 20,000 miles in search of sycamores, and found three Yellow-browed Warblers, a Chiffchaff, and a handful of Willow Warblers. In eight hours of birding. A poor return? Yes, so we started looking at sheep.

A truly lovely sheep

I found a particularly attractive one at Dale of Walls (I'm releasing the location only on the understanding that she's spoken for). An excellent-looking ravine brimming with cover, about a mile east of the Atlantic, caused us to make an emergency stop. Wow, habitat! Amazing habitat! There could be anything in there, we said. There wasn't, there was nothing. Not a single bloody bird. Then I noticed the sheep. I'm not saying I'm in love, but it's close. Let's just say that it was the most exciting thing that happened all day.   

When it's bad up here, it's pretty bloody bad. It got better though as at about 3pm it started raining heavily. As I say, this probably had no impact whatsoever on our ability to find birds, but to ensure that we ended the day on zero we packed it in and went home for a cup of tea. As someone once said, things can only get better, though looking at the forecast the wind seems set to get stronger. That would make Shetland windier than the surface of Jupiter. Having been here for three days now, I contend that to be entirely possible.

PS I swear that there has been absolutely no exaggeration in this post.

Hard work in High Winds

Eshaness Lighthouse with attractive passerine migrant

It is always windy in Shetland. As a result the tallest tree measures just 25cm. Fact. This makes it easy to scan the treetops, but also means that you usually have to peg yourself down to prevent yourself being blown away. Today it was so windy that I saw a House Sparrow blown across a tin roof. It did a kind of cartwheel before righting itself and managing to cling on again. Or maybe it was just having fun, let's face it, there's piss all else to do on Shetland, you might as well engage in a bit of amateur gymnastics for the amusement of your fellow passerines.

Lovely Sheep

Today was all about seeing rare birds badly, and common birds really well. Some you win, some you lose. The wind was blowing at about 165mph, which probably didn't help matters. The first bird we got terrible views of was a Coue's Arctic Redpoll. This was a great shame as I have never seen this race before. I got it flying away, could have been a Bullfinch, and then briefly in a bush, could have been a Linnet. These two briefest of glimpses took about an hour each, and to really keep our spirits up we all got a good and thorough soaking in driving rain. Happy days. Making us even happier was a sod of an Acro that we spent more time chasing, which when it finally gave up hiding turned out to be the one species we didn't want it to be.

It got better though. We got about 0.2s of a Barred Warbler, and 0 seconds of a Red-breasted Flycatcher. These prolonged views cost another hour or so, but at least it didn't rain again. The wind did increase to 500mph though. Great for getting rid of dandruff.

All was not in vain though. I found a lovely northwestern-type Redpoll at the very top of Mainland Shetland whilst stalking a particularly nice Wheatear, and Bradders found a silky Wood Warbler at Busta House. Bird of the day award probably goes to the 103 Snow Buntings at Eshaness - a proper Shetland bird in a proper Shetland landscape.
  

So, a hard day. When the wind has been dominated by westerlies for about a month, finding Sibe passerines is always going to be rather challenging. We didn't even get a Yellow-browed today, that's how difficult it has been. The wind is relentless. When you get back indoors after a day in the field you feel raw. You tingle, and the face that looks back at you in the mirror is bright red. Can you imagine what Howard looks like? 

Arrival on Shetland

Lerwick from Bressay Sound

Well, Simon King was right, there is no better way to arrive on Shetland than by boat. Sailing up Bressay Sound in the early morning light was simply fantastic, especially as I had managed to sleep for a full seven hours. Four beers and a large plate of fish and chips probably contributed to my comatose state, but nonetheless I was surprised at how much sleep I got in only a reclining chair with my fleece over my head. A quick breakfast, a cup of tea, and I got myself up on deck for pretty much first light. By this time we were well past Sumburgh Head, only about forty-five minutes out, and in the lee of the mainland, were on a flat-calm sea. It was extremely pleasant, there is something special about a sunrise from the water.




Right on cue, Bradders was there to meet me at the terminal, and after a quick unpacking of gear, the team of the two of us, Howard, and Bradders Snr, were off and out birding. First stop the tiny hamlet of Brake on South Mainland, where we felt we stood a good chance of seeing possibly the only remaining Pallid Harrier on Shetland. After a few Whinchat and my first Yellow-browed Warbler, the Harrier duly appeared in the valley and sat on a post showing off. Then it was up and away, appearing to hunt low along a burn, and we never saw it again.   

Next stop Quendale for that superb Shetland past-time, iris-bashing. For those of you that don't know, some of the boggier bits of Shetland are carpeted in vast iris beds, typically along small streams. The sueda of the north, it is the stuff of nightmares. Unfortunately, birds love hiding in it, and the only way to find them is to go in after them. The procedure is as follows: Enter iris bed, fall over. Get up, progress a few feet, fall over again. Get up, sink knee deep in particularly boggy bit, fall over again, swear. Repeat. A lot. Occasionally find a bird, which nine times out of ten will flip in a non-identifiable manner fifty metres back into the irises you just walked through. For our troubles, we found a Bluethroat and another Yellow-browed Warbler, so a fairly good return, though as I sit typing this my ankes really do hurt. Wanstead Flats this is not.

A very large iris bed. Let me at it!!

We birded a few more sites nearby, including the famous Channerwick, but largely drew a blank and so caved in and twitched a fantastic adult Lesser Grey Shrike to the north of Lerwick. I can't tell you how far it was as I fell asleep as soon as we set off, and only woke up when we got there. I like to contribute. Anyway, always go and see Shrikes, you will never - ever - be disappointed.