November 01, 2004
Masked Shrike? Not quite…
Fairly uneventful weekend, as despite last week ending on a nice spell of south-easterlies, I was unable to get out birding at all over the last two days. Am only too aware that winter is just round the corner, and up here that means some pretty ghastly weather for the next few months. The sort of weather that means I’m going to want to keep my car inside overnight, to avoid flying debris (salmon feed sacks, gravel, loose fenceposts, pallets etc). Would like to pretend I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. So spent the past 48 hours clearing out an outbuilding so I can get the car in.
The sum total of the weekend’s birding were a pair of Goldcrests, and whilst walking the mutt to the golfcourse and back for a pee, my third shrike species of the year on the island, and fourth on Shetland as a whole… a Great Grey. Always a pleasure, and for a southern birder there’s something uniquely pleasing about finding any sort of shrike. Somehow more satisfying than a warbler for instance. Or is that just me? Anyhow, very nice, though Masked would have been better of course…
The Fife Masked Shrike is something of a epiphany for me – I finally know the twitchy thing is now dead and buried for good – I look at the photos and find myself thinking ‘nice bird’, but not feeling I should be making travel plans, or even just rotten because realistically I can’t leave Shetland for a bird. I just look and appreciate a blinding bird, and think to myself ‘if there, then why not here one day?’. It’s a pleasing flight of fancy… imagine if that had turned up on Shetland, not Fife… ho ho, the poor chequebook birders who’d have had yet another expensive twitch this autumn! I’m well out of it.
Mind you, Fife is hardly local for many people. It’s another long haul, and surely another nail in the coffin of innumerable relationships. There are going to be more than few splits on the back of this year, and I don’t mean taxonomic ones!
Bizarre birding moment on Friday – eating lunch at the superb North Atlantic Fisheries College (mmm, monkfish… dreamy reverie), looked up as a movement outside the window caught my eye. At first I thought there was a rat sitting on the window ledge, but then it raised its head… a knackered Water Rail! Poor little sod sat there for the whole meal watching me stuff my face. I got a box from the kitchens, and walked outide to the rail – which let me pick it up without a struggle. Completely knackered, and with none of the usual spiteful venom you associate with Water Rails.
Took it home to a plate of earthworms (devoured in moments), roosted it overnight, then released it (fighting fit) on the water meadows by the island harbour. Like all the best stories, a happy ending.
Follow the Weather Starling…
Posted by Stercorarius at November 1, 2004 10:21 AM