February 25, 2005
Arctic vagrants
(NB - for those looking for the Little Auk / Gyr Falcon image - click here)
Made a conscious effort today to finally reconnect with the drake King Eider that's been eluding me ever since my initial crappy views of it roosting on West Linga a few weeks ago. The Eider flock it accompanies have been extremely elusive whenever I've been looking for them (mainly first thing in the morning on my way to the ferry) so it's been a fruitless search so far.
Left the house twenty minutes earlier than usual, and headed straight down the island, checking Linga Sound, West Linga, and the salmon cages as I went. No joy. Drove onto the quay the pelagic boats moor alongside, and was greeted by a solitary gull - a 1st w Iceland - much browner than the bird I saw weeks ago on the island, so a different individual.
Finally relocated the Eider flock sheltering behind the salmon cages, and with them on the edge of the flock the King Eider. Painfully distant though, and this distance combined with the low elevation, dim early morning light and camera shake at high magnification all conspired to make even a record shot impossible.
Got on the ferry to find B heading off the island too. We stayed out on the cardeck hoping to get a better view of the King Eider, and as we left the harbour I saw a white-winged gull perched on the end of the whitefish boat quay. I called it as the Iceland, then immediately realised my mistake - this bird was a cleaner white, with a long, heavy and obviously pink based bill - a 2nd w Glaucous Gull.
We didn't get any sort of view through bins of the King Eider, and retreated to B's car to chat about tree planting on my land this year, the merits of 30 vs 60 ft ringing rides, potential heligolands, and the distressing news that an islander had told B of a white raptor he'd seen perched on a fencepost at Laxo earlier this week. Yet another Gyr eludes me!
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February 21, 2005
Meanwhile, back in the real world...
(NB - for those looking for the Little Auk / Gyr Falcon image - look for February 14th entry)
I'd be a liar if I said that I wasn't secretly hoping to bump into something good this weekend, and particularly something of a gyrish persuasion! Walked around the golf course yesterday in fine, blustery northerlies. Yell, Fetlar and Mainland were all obscured by cloud and snow showers, just leaving us and the Skerries under clear sunshine. If I was a wind-driven gyr fresh off the sea and looking for somewhere to land, I'd have gone for the biggest landmass on show.
So I spent my whole walk a bundle of reactionary nerves, flinching every time something even vaguely white flew anywhere below the horizon. Needless to say, a lot of distant Fulmars shearing low over the cliffs got a lot more attention than they otherwise might have done! And needless to say I didn't find my own gyr. Lots of Oystercatchers now up on the island, some down in the meadows at the southwest end, but a few around the shore of the north end too. No Purple Sands surprisingly, but plenty of Fulmars starting to loaf in pairs on the cliff ledges.
It wasn't all gloom and doom, as I managed a record party of Whooper Swan on east loch - 7 birds, 5 adults and 2 imms. Mindful of the Whistling/Trumpeting nonsense going on south I gave them more than my usual cursory glance, but am pleased to report these were genuine birds and not wire-hoppers for the gullible and needy to try and legitimise onto their lists!
Had stunning views of 3 Otters on Saturday, an adult and two of last years cubs, as they fished just offshore. The cubs tried to emulate the adults fishing technique, porpoising over the kelp beds, but with little success - the adult caught several fish, climbing out onto the rocks each time to eat her catch. More often than not the cubs swarmed out of the water and pestered her until she relinquished her meal to them, and dutifully returned to the kelp to try again. She did eventually manage to wolf down something herself. Of course, as soon as I turned on the camera for those definitive Otter-shots, the message "Battery exhausted" flashed up on the screen... When will I learn?! Must get a spare battery for the camera.
Anyway, battery charged this morning, and into town at lunchtime to go to the opticians - my eyesight's clearly not completely shot, as I stumbled across a couple of white-winged gulls on the harbour water alongside the carpark; a grotty 1st winter and an altogether more spruce adult Iceland.
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February 15, 2005
A couple more Gyr Falcon photos
(NB - for those looking for the much-vaunted Little Auk image - scroll down the page to the previous entry)
Just a couple more photos of this beauty... don't we all wish we got views like this rather than miles-distant glimpses of a white blur motoring through the sky!
Given we're due another cold snap this weekend, and given my entirely spooky and uncanny knack of naming a species on here a few days / weeks before one of us finds it (cf Brown Shrike, King Eider, Gyr), it seems time to wishfully predict the next one... I'll be checking the sea for either a Brunnich's Guillemot or (not asking too much here!) either Steller's or Spectacled Eider. A little blind optimism never hurt anybody!!
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February 14, 2005
Gyr Falcon photos
Got a sickening text from JL on Saturday morning - away fishing west of Ramna Stacks, he was on watch when a falcon flew past the window - just how exciting must it be to find your first white phase Gyr flying past a few feet away from you?! I was really pleased for him (easy to be magnanimous when it's not a lifer, but all the same I'm jealous as hell really!), and went round yesterday to see the photos. There were some absolute stunners, but this one, carrying a Little Auk it caught is surely a classic...
JL got nice prolonged views of it for an hour on board his boat, and for a couple more hours it perched up on their sister boat. I make no excuses for just devoting the rest of this entry to the photos - mouthwatering stuff. There may be some more to follow...
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February 10, 2005
Iceland Gulls
Had to go over to Bressay today for work, and had no sooner parked the car than an Iceland Gull floated by outside. An hour later, back to the car, and picked up my bins to see if it was still hanging out with the Herrings offshore - only to find not one, but five of them!
Felt suitably inspired at lunchtime, so stopped by the roadside near my office to have a quick scan through the large loafing gull flock in the field at Gremista junction - another 3 there, 2 by the kipper shop (!), and 1 at the Catch. There may be a little duplication, but either way it's more Iceland Gulls in one helping than I've seen in years.
Just a record shot in ghastly light - it's about to snow
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February 06, 2005
Planting cover
Not much birdy to report unfortunately; first Oystercatcher of the year on the island today, feeding in the waterlogged field next door, and flying around calling on and off all day. Many waders on the soggy fields (Redshank, Turnstone and some Curlews), presumably feeding on surfacing worms. The rain has been relentless for the past 24 hours, and the ground here is saturated. Good weather for planting the last of the cuttings we were given in the autumn, this time about 30 pieces of blackcurrant, as well as the last of the icelandic willow cuttings I took from Yell. I reckon last weekend I got about 200 willows in, so hopefully a good percentage of these will strike. Also finally got round to planting the sycamore seeds I collected last autumn; only a dozen or so - this year I will be a lot more professional and gather hundreds - there's nothing like sycamore for attracting those eastern autumn warblers!
Am acutely aware that only a few miles away over the water on Fetlar (so in sight of the house) there's a white phase Gyr Falcon mooching around. So was galvanised into action when I heard a raptor "screeing" this afternoon - grabbed my bins and climbed onto a wall for a vantage point. I could hear the bird calling, and moving fast, but never saw it. Probably just one of the resident Merlins. Still, not a complete loss as my scanning around picked up a couple of early Red-throated Divers on the sea below the house. Only a few weeks and the first migrants will be trickling through...
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February 02, 2005
2004 - Welcome to birding Shetland style
In the abscence of any new birds to report, now seems like a good time to look back at 2004, my first full year on the island. Plus it's as good an excuse as any to put all the rarity photos together in one place!
It was certainly a year of adjustments for me in terms of what to expect around the house - in my village in the south-east of England I was used to all the usual garden species, plus a few somewhat more scarce species like Grey Partridge, Turtle Dove, Corn Bunting and Little Owl. It's now been 18 months since I last saw a Blue Tit... On the other hand, I can now seawatch from the kitchen window, and regularly expect the usual suspects of Gannet, Shag, Kittiwake, Fulmar and Black Guillemot. Great Northern Divers are resident offshore in the winter and spring, and Red-throated Divers breed a few hundred yards away from the house. Occasional Eider and Long-tailed Ducks mooch around offshore in the winter, and Otters are if not regular, then certainly seen every few weeks. This winter we've had a female Otter hanging out in our peat shed, swearing at us as we go to collect a new sack of peats for the fire.
I've traded my garden breeding birds in the south (Wren, Great Tit, Song Thrush, Blackbird and Collared Dove) for a suite of waders on and around our land - I can lie in bed at night in the early summer and listen to Redshank, Oystercatcher, Lapwing, Ringed Plover, Curlew, Whimbrel, Golden Plover, and drumming Snipe.
My flock of chickens used to just attract Starlings and House Sparrows; it still does, but has also dragged in Woodcock, Twite, Brambling, Snow Bunting and Siskin.
As for the scarce and rare stuff... my local patch I define as the peninsular at the north-east end of the island on which our croft is roughly central - an area approximately 1.5 miles long, a mixture of some green fields bounded by fences and stone dykes, a little maritime heath, some herb-rich grassland, a small plantation of conifers and deciduous shrubs, some small patches of vegetables, a wild golf course, lots of peat moorland, two small bodies of fresh water, a gravel airstrip, and surrounded on three sides by the sea. It's a wonderfully diverse habitat mosaic really, and so it's no surprise that the bird list is so good. And being on the east it's the first landfall for many migrants...
I arrived in late 2003, in time to see Pallas's Grasshopper Warbler, Olive-backed Pipit, Buff-breasted Sandpiper and Great Grey Shrike. I couldn't wait to see what 2004 would bring...
The first rarity of the year was a female Sardinian Warbler that JL and I found on JL's birthday in the plantation; an incredible skulker, it was initially impossible to assign it to any species apart from a dark sylvia sp; it took a couple of days before JL saw it perched out in the open and could clinch it as Sardinian.
(3rd for Shetland)
For me the most notable thing about spring migration were Red-backed Shrikes - several females, and eventually my first male in the UK. Summer was notable for the Storm Petrels swirling round my moth trap one still humid evening. Autumn started fairly promisingly, with B's mist nets in the plantation yielding Wryneck and Barred, Icterine and Grasshopper Warblers in August. A small fall of Marsh Warblers hinted at better warblers to come, and in September this seemed about to be abundantly fulfilled. A screaming south-easterly gale produced another mystery warbler, a good-sized and seemingly long-tailed locustella. All three of us saw it in flight, myself only the once, and JL and B heard it call ("pet"). But every time it flushed it flew high, so it evaded the nets, and so was never pinned down. What was it? Given what turned up in the same gale, I hate to think...
...JL found a shrike sp below our croft in shocking weather conditions one evening, but despite our searching we couldn't relocate it. The following morning I briefly glimpsed it facing away from me on a fence, and assumed it must be a female Red-backed. Oops. JL found it later in the morning, and immediately realised he'd got a good 'un - either Brown or Isabelline. It flew into the heligoland just as I arrived back - the emotion of looking into the trapping box and seeing an adult male cristatus Brown Shrike looking back up at me will live with me for years! What on earth could that warbler have been?!
(3rd for Shetland, 5th for Britain, still less than 10 European records)
We had few spells of south-easterlies after this, but nothing exceptional turned up - just Wood Warbler, Red-breasted Flycatcher, and a Bluethroat. However, there was still one last big surprise left in the year in October, when B found a dark wheatear on the roadside below the croft. It flew up to outside our crofthouse, and perched up on a gatepost - Pied Wheatear! It gave excellent views, but gradually became flightier, and gave us several hours runaround while we tried to keep up with it as it headed inland; poor JL was off the island, and it took him until the early evening to return and refind it.
(5th for Shetland)
Other birds of note on the island but not on my patch during the autumn included Yellow-browed Warbler, Rose-coloured Starling and Citrine Wagtail. It took me a while to catch up with a Waxwing, though P and JL had seen several earlier. 'Northern' Bullfinches were much easier - large, chunky finches with a buzzy "toot" call. One female has stayed into 2005 on the island. A Great Grey Shrike on my patch gave me 3 shrike species in 2004 seen from the house/land; it could so easily have been 4 on the island if only the convincing descriptions of Lesser Grey JL was told had been reported to him sooner!
However, elsewhere on the islands I saw Lesser Grey Shrike in the summer, and White's Thrush and Chestnut-eared Bunting in the autumn. If only the Rufous-tailed Robin had stuck around...
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