Maybe not

I suppose after yesterday's excitement it was too much to expect anything else today. The only thing that turned today was the wind, which went northerly. Consequently it was fucking freezing with wintry showers. It seemed like good weather for finding an Arctic Redpoll, but the most interesting things I saw today were a Dunnock and a Peregrine at Sumburgh (both valuable holiday ticks), the regular Grutness Bluethroat and a Yellow-browed Warbler which wouldn't sit still long enough to photograph in the Grutness garden.

In between these megas we sat in the house drinking tea, making inroads into the 'Virkie bread mountain' (the result of a serious shopping duplication incident... peanut butter was also involved) and cleaning up cat sick.

An early night seems like a good idea as the weather looks truly 'monster' for the next two days. If we can't find something in that we should all have our bins confiscated.

I need to come up with some sort of gimmick to get my Fatbirder counter up – Mark is miles ahead of me now with his crop cam and Lancy shots/links on Surfbirds, Fuckbook etc. A free slice of bread with every page view perhaps? Or maybe I should just try and make this crap more interesting.

Just be thankful I'm not offering some free cat sick with every page view...

Is this the turning point?

Last night's westerly gale gradually subsided over the course of the day, encouraging us out into the field. As usual we didn't see a great deal – just a Yellow-browed Warbler in the willows, and a Jack Snipe in the ditch by Rob's house (not the Ditch of Despair, the one right next to the garden). A flock of 33 Bramblings in Toab was nice, and 2 Snow Buntings were at Sumburgh Head. By early afternoon though we were bored, so we decided to twitch the Arctic Redpoll at Aith. This was quite tame, and even I managed to get some reasonable shots for a change:

Around 14:25 Rob had a phone call from Steve Minton to say he'd flushed what he thought was a Lanceolated Warbler twice from thistles at Scatness. We went straight there, and after about an hour of brief flight views we finally saw it well enough to satisfy ourselves that it was indeed a Lancy. Mark got a couple of good record shots, but I didn't even try, preferring just to see it well rather than end up with a load of blurred crap and not having seen it properly.

After rushing back to the house to look at the photos on the computer and check that it really was a Lancy we went back to Scatness and had further excellent close views of it as it perched on walls and crept around in the grass. I left my camera in the car this time, as it was raining, but I doubt I'd have got much anyway as it was getting distinctly dusky by now.

A splendid British tick, not only for me but also for Rob and Gary, and something I always hoped I'd see in Shetland one day. Thanks Steve!

Remember those two words at the beginning of this post – westerly gale... and the next day a Lanceolated Warbler turns up. So birds are arriving even in apparently 'adverse' conditions and given that the weather for the next few days looks more easterly, this probably is the turning point.

Day of partial rest

Strong westerly wind and heavy showers this morning. Walked up to the Toab shop to get milk so I could have some tea and porridge. After breakfast walked round Toab and saw nothing. Spent the rest of the morning sitting on the sofa with a farting cat, drinking tea, eating fried eggs and messing about on the laptop while listening to John Shuttleworth on BBC7.

Bird news: The Wryneck and Meadow Pipit that were in Rob's freezer last year are still present, and have been joined by this Crossbill (gratuitous knob gag coming up) – a nice red cock:

This afternoon Mark and I got Rob to drop us off at Grutness, and we had a kick around there for a couple of hours but saw nothing of any note. Arriving back at the house, Gary told us he had had a Little Bunting at Channerwick so we went there and saw it almost as soon as we got out of the car. Mark & Gary got some good photos of it, but I completely fucked it up as my camera was still set to +2 exposure compensation after photographing some Greylags flying over earlier. By the time I'd sorted the camera settings out the bunting had flown off.

I then went round the back of where it had come down, only to fall over a fence and land on my arse. Just as I finally made it to where Mark was now getting more photos it flew off high down the valley and we didn't see it again. The old cliche that owning a camera doesn't make you a photographer certainly applies to me. In my case owning a camera usually turns me into a fumbling incompetent fuckwit whenever there's something worth photographing right in front of me.

I'm too old for this

Went to bed at the ridiculous time of 02:45 this morning, woke up still pissed at about 8 o'clock, had a shower to wake me up a bit, staggered outside, saw another Yellow-browed Warbler (3 out of 3 now) and ate some porridge. What I should have done then was go back to bed. But the weather looked promising (warm, sunny and flat calm first thing, becoming light south-easterly and cloudier later) so we gave it about 78.5% and saw a few bits and pieces around south Mainland.

An annoying moment occurred early on as I was walking up the road towards Toab. Mark rang to say that the Rosefinch was in the big crop field; as I was on the phone to him a pipit flew over calling. Now, in early October, in Shetland with a south-easterly wind it really should have been an Olive-backed. But no – it landed right in front of Mark, who gave me the bad news that it was just a fucking Tree Pipit. Arse.

Then up to Sumburgh Head for the lunchtime 'window of opportunity' when birds seem to arrive. Today nothing at all arrived, although there were 6 Snow Buntings, and I even managed to get a half decent shot of one:


Levenwick is very underwatched and always looks good so we spent a couple of hours checking the various gardens there. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was crap.

Back down south late afternoon we relocated a few scarce migrants that had been seen earlier at Grutness: a nice but unapproachable Bluethroat, another Rosefinch and a Short-toed Lark flying around with Skylarks. The Twite in the Grutness garden are often very approachable, and with lovely afternoon light I got a few photos including this one which I was particularly pleased with:

Dinner was again provided by Mark, a nice chicken stew with dumplings. The cats were very interested in the preparation of this. No idea why – I didn't even know cats liked leeks.

Shut up or you'll be going in the stew

No alcohol tonight, and hopefully an early night if I can get up off the sofa.

Doctor, I have this feeling I'm being watched

Not much to report in the way of birds today – there were 'rares' all over the place, but not in south Mainland. Possibly something to do with the fact that the wind was mainly northerly, or more likely the fact that we spend too much time drinking tea and pissing about with webcams etc.

Actually we did try fairly hard today, but for very little reward. The day got off to a promising start, with a brief Yellow-browed Warbler in Rob's garden. Only the second Sunnydell garden record and I've found both of them. And both times Rob hasn't been here! Encouraged by this and news of good birds elsewhere I went off to tramp through the Ditch of Delights or whatever it's called (the one where Marcus found the Paddyfield and Thrush Nightingale last year), only for Rob to see an even briefer Bluethroat in the same place the warbler had disappeared into. Needless to say there weren't any birds in the ditch. In fact I've yet to see a bird of any species in that fucking ditch. Ditch of Bollocks would be a better name.

After this we covered the Virkie/Exnaboe/Toab area thoroughly, but saw very little. After getting some essential supplies at the shop, Rob had the 'leftfield' idea of driving up to the top of Fitful Head. You're not really supposed to go up there, but we did, past the 'no unauthorised vehicles' sign and up an incredibly steep slope to the top. The view from here is amazing, but there was very little in the way of birds apart from 4 Snow Buntings which flatly refused to be photographed. I did, however, have a moth tick on Fitful Head – a Haworth's Minor, which was nice.

An unusual view – looking down on Sumburgh Head

Looking north from Fitful Head

And that was about it, apart from the strange experience of being watched eating my tea (a very nice chicken biryani cooked by Mark) on Mark's 'crop cam' (see yesterday's post) which had inadvertently been left on, and was broadcasting a reflection in the window of Rob's living room! When we found out this was happening, we briefly considered turning the camera round to face the room in a sort of 'Birders Big Brother'. However, we quickly decided that this would be immensely tedious for everyone, watching three blokes sitting around drinking whisky and typing on laptops. And there's no sound on the webcam. In fact it would be worse if there was sound, as it would probably lead to a lot of libel actions.

Weather forecast for tomorrow is monster again, but this time the winds are from the south-east, so something might actually make landfall here rather than further north.

02:20 update: another moth tick - 2 Brindled Ochres in Rob's moth trap. Yes, I'm still up, and the bottle of Jura is empty.

Welcome to sunny Shetland

Having only had about three hours sleep last night, I'm not actually sure what I did today, but I seem to be sitting on Rob's sofa typing this, so I assume I travelled to Shetland via Mark's car, a couple of planes and Rob's borrowed white van. Or I could be dreaming of course. No I'm definitely not dreaming – I can smell the cat piss. Actually that doesn't help, as one of our cats kindly pissed on my suitcase before I left, so I could still be at home.

Let's assume for the sake of sanity that I'm not dreaming. The passengers on the Edinburgh – Sumburgh flight seemed to be mostly twitchers heading for the Whalsay Veery/Fetlar Taiga Flycatcher, and the weather when we arrived was surprisingly nice and sunny, with just a light north-westerly breeze, although this later deteriorated into 'heavy clag' – a descriptive Northern term for drizzle. My notebook tells me that we saw a couple of Wheatears in the Toab fields and a Snow Bunting at Sumburgh Head. We thought we might have heard the Pechora Pipit over Toab, but were more likely hallucinating from lack of sleep.

Highlight of the day was watching Mark set up his much anticipated 'crop cam' in Rob's garden. Yes, there really are crops (of a sort) in Rob's garden, planted with the sole intention of attracting birds, since Rob famously shuns vegetables and usually lives on fried egg sandwiches. The camera initially gave crippling views of a drake American Wigeon skulking among the onions (anyone who knows Rob's garden will understand), but these were later replaced by crippling views of the inside of a plastic jug keeping the rain off the camera.

Aha – I can prove I'm not dreaming – here are some photos of a lovely Shetland Starling (juvenile/1st-winter female), and the Island of Fair (adult male – no I don't know what I'm talking about either), showing well this afternoon from Toab:

The weather forecast is promising, veering monster, and there are rare birds all over the place apart from in south Mainland (very mobile Pechora Pipit somewhere, probably). A bottle of Jura has been purchased for consumption later, assuming I can stay awake long enough to open it.