Sykes’s Warbler

While the rest of Shetland south has gone quietly mad, here is just quiet. Spent yesterday tramping around the locale with just one (nice, bright, but still singular) Yellow-browed Warbler to show for my efforts. Meanwhile, the mobile went loopy. Brown Flycatcher, Fair Isle… eek.
The reason I was home and birding midweek was a Council [...]

Cranes

What’s this got in common…
Picked up a text from JLI just as I was driving onto the 6.30pm ferry this evening – 3 Cranes at Vatshoull. I just lurve Cranes something chronic – such awesome birds. Felt dead tense all the way across – would they still be there? The text [...]

Autumn begins here

In case I hadn’t already noticed, autumn officially began today. How do I know this? Because I’ve seen my first Yellow-browed Warblers of the year, so it must be autumn now.
At least 1 in the plantation, another calling but unseen (by me, though it showed well to JLI) in Roadside’s roses, and 1 more in [...]

Short-toed Lark

Never got round to yesterday’s update, such as it would have been (Short-toed Lark still present, 9 Chaffinches, odds and sods of warblers, and my first Brambling of the autumn – and best of all, 20 minutes of watching a dog Otter feeding some 10 metres from me).
Minor update today, as going out on the [...]

Citrine Wagtail

Have I said how much I love living and birding here? Well, I do. It’s great.
Take today – got up before first light to spend a couple of hours trying to get to grips with a shrike JLI found yesterday – a really furtive beast that eventually succumbed to BM’s mistnet later in the day [...]

Scooby snacks

Back to work today, a complete anticlimax after the past 48 hours. A little nervous about what JLI might turn up, but the texts from him were mercifully uneventful – the Short-toed Lark still around and being harrassed by a Yellow Wagtail; a Common Sandpiper on the shore; and a Pochard at Vatshoull.
I felt faintly [...]

Crouching bunting, leaping lark

Somebody shoot me. Am absolutely fucked with exhaustion. It’s been a long, long weekend of more or less dawn-to-dusk tramping around birding, and it’s been so worth it. Kicked off today with the usual circuit of Skaw, before decamping to the quarry to try for some Yellow-breasted Bunting record shots (am under no illusions about [...]

Yellow-breasted Bunting etc

This should be subtitled “epic day”. It really has been.
Kicked off with a quick circuit of the home patch, and caught BM a juicy Fieldfare in the heligoland. Onwards quickly to see if there was any joy with yesterday’s lost locustella – no – so on to check if the Bluethroat was still around [...]

Anticipation

Spent a very nervous day sat in a windfarm meeting with half an eye on the mobile as the grapevine reported what was being found elsewhere on Shetland: Yellow-breasted Bunting, Great Snipe, Lanceolated Warbler, Citrine Wagtail… and for a mercy, none of them from our island.
News from PVH – another birder has bought a [...]

More fall (for) you

Took a day’s holiday to make the most of the weather – deliciously south-easterly and rainy. Birders are the only people (with the possible exception of lunatic naked ramblers from London) who enjoy these conditions, but even I was struggling to find the love this morning as the wind made holding binoculars steady almost impossible [...]