October 29, 2005
Pioneering stuff - Corvo, Azores, October 2005
I feel like I'm fast becoming a mouthpiece for other people's birding achievements, and what's to follow certainly serves to enhance the trend of talking about American species occuring in the Western Palearctic. For those who haven't stumbled across the story yet, this is the bare bones as I know it...
One enterprising and pioneering British birder, a guy called Peter Alfrey, has been birding on Corvo in the Azores for the past week or two. The numbers and range of species he's found are mind-boggling... In 10 days between the 19th and the 28th October he'd seen at least 55 American migrants involving 16 species. As if that weren't bad enough, these include such mouthwatering species as White-eyed, Red-eyed and Philadelphia Vireos; Black-throated Blue and Hooded Warblers; Rose-breasted Grosbeak; Yellow-billed Cuckoo; Bobolink; White-crowned Sparrow; Indigo Bunting (including 5 at once in one bush!); Scarlet Tanager; Buff-bellied Pipit; and a flock of 27 Chimney Swifts!! Also, bizarrely, an Arctic Redpoll - and a hornemanni rather than a scrotty exilipes. Most of the species seen have apparently been photographed, so I'll be providing a link to them as soon as they go online.
Peter Alfrey is still on Corvo, trapped (oh the hardship!) by a series of violent depressions sweeping in off the Atlantic. There should be more species to come... This is truly pioneering stuff, and makes the likes of Cornish birders moving to live on Shetland, or Scottish birders spending a few weeks on Barra all seem terribly tame by comparison. This guy deserves everything he's getting; I bet there's another first to be found there yet.
Meanwhile, back in reality - JL found a nice flock of Snow Buntings in my lower park yesterday - still present this morning. Winter's coming! Am keeping my fingers firmly crossed for a Chimney Swift over the loch in the next week...
Follow the Weather Starling for a forecast, or see Shetland live on the NAFC webcam… 
Today's North Atlantic chart
An Icelandic Birding Diary (Iceland, funnily enough)
Nature in Shetland website - all the up-to-date bird, insect, cetacean etc news for Shetland, plus photos... indispensable.
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October 20, 2005
An Icelandic Birding Diary
Something of a world exclusive for this blog, and a complete pleasure to boot - the chance to be the first to announce and publicise the arrival of a new birding blog on the scene. This one's rather different to the run of the mill birds-what-I've-spotted-at-my-local-reservoir, as it's the diary of a friend of mine who lives and birds somewhere most of us can only dream about - Iceland.
Birding there is by all accounts not that dissimilar to birding in Shetland, insofar as there's a relatively small number of regular breeding species, and a huge potential for vagrant species from further afield. There the similarities end. Iceland's breeding birds include such wonders as Harlequin, Brunnich's Guillemot and more phalaropes than you could shake a Gyrfalcon at. Their autumn vagrants tend to have a more American flavour than Shetland's usual Sibe theme. It's scintillating stuff. And best of all, it's recounted in a dry and compelling style, and complemented with great photos (unlike my usual standard of blithe wittering and blurry snapshots). Perhaps I shouldn't recommend this... you'll never come back...
The Diary has just started, and is already awash with species that make me green with envy. Ever fancied finding a Buff-bellied Pipit? EBR did just that recently, and tells us how it feels. I have a shrewd suspicion there will be plenty more American passerines featuring in the next updates, and maybe even an account of finding a 2nd ever record of a species for Iceland...
>Click here for the Icelandic Birding Diary<
As for Shetland? Desert Wheatear yesterday on the nearby Out Skerries, so there's hope for us yet. Not really the same as a catharus thrush or two though...
Follow the Weather Starling for a forecast, or see Shetland live on the NAFC webcam…
Today's North Atlantic chart
An Icelandic Birding Diary (Iceland, funnily enough)
Nature in Shetland website - all the up-to-date bird, insect, cetacean etc news for Shetland, plus photos... indispensable.>>
Come back soon!
October 19, 2005
South easterly blues
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.
Follow the Weather Starling for a forecast, or see Shetland live on the NAFC webcam…
Today's North Atlantic chart
Nature in Shetland website - all the up-to-date bird, insect, cetacean etc news for Shetland, plus photos... indispensable.>>
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October 10, 2005
What the fu-
Sloped out yesterday with JL to try our luck in a quick spin around one of the lesser watched townships on the island; it's a more or less south-easterly facing relatively sheltered bowl of an area, with probably more patches of crops than anywhere else on the island. It suffers from a catch 22 problem - rare birds tend not to be found there, so none of us check it out with the sort of regularity or intensity we perhaps should, so not many birds get found there... and so on. I've always liked the look of it, and given the choice yesterday to decide where we went, opted for it.
It didn't disappoint. Or rather, it did, but we expected that. The usual story of slogging round tattie rigs and kale yards to no avail whatsoever. One last kale yard to check, perched up on the side of the bowl, and right on the edge of the moor that leads over to where I stay. We'd no sooner walked into the yard when a warbler bombed out of the tatties in front of us, and into a hedge of roses that flanks the yard. I flanked it, and flushed it back into sight for JL - a rather smart Yellow-browed Warbler. Not anything to set the world alight, especially this year when the UK seems to be awash with them, but all the same, a Good Bird. Nothing else in the vast patch of kale except an easily seen male Blackcap. We decided to call it a day, and started to walk from the yard.
At our feet a small brown warbler exploded from the grass and dived into the kale beside us. A literally split second view before it was lost to sight. A small locustella. A... who knows what? I could guess, but that's not good enough. We tried with mounting pessimism to relocate it, but the kale yard was vast, the cover dense, and searching was complicated by the mounting wind that made the kale move like a chaotic purple and green cabbage blanket. Frankly, we knew we had no chance of seeing it again, and sure enough, we didn't.
I went back to pouring concrete at home. Far more constructive than frustrating little locustellae that refuse to give themselves up.
Follow the Weather Starling for a forecast, or see Shetland live on the NAFC webcam…
Today's North Atlantic chart
Nature in Shetland website - all the up-to-date bird, insect, cetacean etc news for Shetland, plus photos... indispensable.>>
Come back soon!