Aurora borealis: South easterly blues

October 19, 2005

South easterly blues

Aurora header.jpg

Have just realised what a great title for a blog entry that'd be had I found or at least seen one of the blue-chats - Bluethroat, Bluetail or Blue Robin. I could save it for the happy day I find one of the latter two, but that's likely to be a long time coming (contender for understatement of the year), so I'll use it now in a more literal sense - after four days of south-easterlies, Shetland and our island in particular is strangely rarity-free. I think a Dusky Warbler at Voe on Mainland is about as good as it's got off Fair Isle, and that's just bizarre given the good numbers of Goldcrests and thrushes that are moving through.

Went for a walk around my patch yesterday afternoon with the mutts, and saw over 100 Goldcrests, 300 Redwing, sundry other thrushes, 14 Robins, a late Wheatear and a very late Pied Fly. Had a mad moment of mental blankness with the flycatcher, trying to remember whether Pied should have a primary patch or not. It's been 18 months I think since my last one, so it took a while to let common sense and my mental image of Pied Fly coincide - of course they don't. And nor did this bird.

Felt certain I was going to bump into a Pallas's Warbler, as JL had down the island the day before. After a few dozen crests, I was adjusting my certainty to Yellow-browed. I finally gave up hoping, and just got on with the serious business in hand of making sure my collie didn't chuck herself over the banks into the sea (again) and counting Goldcrests. Went down the island later in the day to collect some stuff from a friend, and noticed JL's car heading to a small collection of houses where a few years ago he found a male Ruppell's Warbler, and more recently (and more prosaicly) where we bumped into a Short-eared Owl being mobbed by a couple of dozen Goldcrests. I knew he had plenty of family commitments, so if he was out birding it had to be chasing up a report of something interesting...

...actually, no it didn't. He was just making the most of a few free minutes. I joined him, and we flushed a Water Rail from a small muddy ditch, but nothing else vaguely remarkable. So where's this year's Chestnut-eared Bunting or Rufous-tailed Robin? I'd love to be proved wrong, but have a feeling this autumn is going to be a damp squib from a birding perspective. Iceland in the meantime is being flooded with Nearctic passerines, so perhaps I should start wishing for some westerlies (never thought I'd say that). Can't do any worse than the south-easterlies.

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