Aurora borealis: <i>I send per post my Nightingale...</i>

May 11, 2006

I send per post my Nightingale...

Aurora header.jpg

Curses. Shetland got off to a roistering start to the spring over the past few days, starting with a smattering of Subalpine Warblers, picking up pace with a Collared Flycatcher, and then finishing in a shuddering crescendo with a Scops Owl.

I meanwhile spent most of the critical 48 hours in bed with the mother and father of all colds. The weather outside was easily the nicest and sunniest Shetland had seen all year (or all of last year for that matter), thus making my absence from work seem highly suspect to those of a mistrusting or suspicious nature. You can rest assured though – had I really been skiving, I’d have been off like a shot for the Collared Flycatcher, and given it was only a mile or so from the ferry terminal I go into every day, the owl as well. (Seeing the Morwenstow bird in ’95 makes missing this individual a little easier).

As it was, I stayed at home snuffling and generally feeling like shit. And only tried for either of these two this morning on my way back to work. And for once my steadfast belief that I’m a lucky birder went completely tits up – the Scops Owl was nowhere to be seen at Swining (I hate this place – far too much impenetrable cover. No wonder it attracts retiring arboreal species like Scops Owls. Or White’s Thrush. Which I also didn’t see).

And then to Brow Marsh in the south mainland for the flycatcher. The gen had it on ‘the fence going into the marsh’. On arrival, only two fences to be seen in the entire marsh, and both conspicuously flycatcherless. Bugger. Gave it a while, but absolutely sod all happened. So I came into work, and hoped that JL would do me a big favour and find the flycatcher with his eagle-sharp eyes and unparalleled rarity finding ability. (Though I did make the precaution of texting him to tell him there was no sign of it in case he didn’t want to waste his time). Later, the cryptic but descriptive reply came by text from the south mainland - ‘4call’.

Good job JL was on form yesterday – my miserable snotty breakfast was enlivened no end by BM arriving with a lifer for JL – a bird he’d found the day before, but seen all too fleetingly to pin down definitively – a nightingale sp. I’ve only seen 2 sprossers, so Thrush would have been a tonic for me. Alas, ‘only’ a Common Nightingale. Practically as rare up here as Thrush, so a good patch tick – and to put this in perspective, JL had found several Thrush Nightingales before finding this, his first Common… Shetland birding at its best.

So from a fall of BB rarities in the islands, what have I got to show for it? A species which I used to be able to hear singing from the back garden in the south-west. And a really sore snout from 48 hours of nose-blowing.

Cheers, Coleridge for this.

In stale blank verse a subject stale
I send per post my Nightingale;
And like an honest bard, dear Wordsworth,
You'll tell me what you think, my Bird's worth.
My own opinion's briefly this--
His bill he opens not amiss;
And when he has sung a stave or so,
His breast, & some small space below,
So throbs & swells, that you might swear
No vulgar music's working there.
So far, so good; but then, 'od rot him!
There's something falls off at his bottom.
Yet, sure, no wonder it should breed,
That my Bird's Tail's a tail indeed
And makes its own inglorious harmony
Æolio crepitû, non carmine.

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