The shift in our birding fortunes began, very subtly and almost unnoticed, on Saturday afternoon. We were at Valyie, where Andy was mourning the departure of three juvenile Common Rosefinch, one of his favourite birds. I guess it takes all sorts. And we had seen all three birds on more than one occasion already.
At about 4pm, Andy called me to say that he had just had a glimpse of the head of an unstreaked acro in the dense bushes behind the house. I joined him and we spent half an hour or so searching for it, but hardly saw a bird. Then news broke that the Ortolan was back on the beach road, so we walked down to try to see it and made a mental note to return to Valyie. The next afternoon we were back. Dusk was falling. I was walking slowly down the gully next to the house, when I flushed what appeared to be a pale, almost sandy-coloured, warbler. It flew further down the gully, and appeared very evenly coloured, with no warm rump tones. I called Andy, who joined me and after a few minutes, the bird flew from the gully, into the crop field across the road. We had one more flight view that evening, in near darkness, but could not add any detail to what we had already seen in two brief flight views.
We were back at 8am the following morning, Monday 3rd October. We were joined by local birder and Unst resident Dave Cooper and a friend. After half an hour or so of searching, Andy located the warbler in the crop. It was extremely elusive, only flicking up occasionally and never perching out. It was also very mobile, appearing in one area and then popping up at the other end of the field for a second, before disappearing. Early on, Andy had a very brief glimpse of the whole bird which suggested Booted Warbler. Later in the morning, we had another flight view, which revealed the short-winged appearance, slightly jinking flight action and no definitely no white in the tail. So we now knew it was not a Booted Warbler and our thoughts moved towards Blyth’s Reed Warbler. As the weather deteriorated, with rain showers sweeping through, the bird appeared less pale, more a light rufous brown. Feeding in soaking vegetation was also making the bird wet, which added to the darker colouration we saw as the day wore on. After five hours, this was my best picture of the warbler:
But we did not let it go. You can feel it when the Birding Gods are testing you. We tried to remain alert and observant, even when the bird disappeared, even when it rained. Fortunately, a few more people joined us as we tried to confirm the identification. Roger Wyatt, from Oxfordshire, and another birder called Scott, had brought thermal imagers. These proved invaluable in helping locate the bird in the crop by narrowing the search zone, which made getting photographs slightly easier, though the bird remained extremely elusive and mobile.
From pictures taken by Roger and Dave, the consensus was that we had found a Blyth’s Reed Warbler. The undertail coverts and flanks appeared clean white, with none of the buff tones of the undertail of Reed Warbler or the flanks of Marsh Warbler. It was noticeably short-winged, even in flight and some images showed a supercilium that bulged in front of the eye but did continue to extend back behind the eye. Dave Cooper has posted some of his pictures here and was happy with the identification, having found his first Blyth’s Reed in the very same field. On that occasion, it took him seven hours to identify it, in similar circumstances. It took us about eight hours in total. Being only an hour behind Dave Cooper, made us feel pretty good!
On Saturday what was presumably the same bird appeared in Dave Cooper’s garden, which is only a twenty-second flight from the Valyie crop field and is visible from it. Here all the requisite features can be seen: clean white undertail coverts and flanks; short primary projection; an obvious fore-supercilium (not the open-faced appearance of Reed with an obvious eye-ring) and a dark “smudge” on the tip of the lower mandible. We did not hear this bird call.
So having taken eight hours over three days to unravel our first rare find on Shetland, it took us about two seconds to wrap up our second. We left Unst on Tuesday morning and began our drive down through Mainland to catch the evening ferry from Lerwick. We had time to pop in to admire some other birds en route, so headed to Hillswick to see the reported Pechora Pipit. As we headed out to the west side of Mainland, Andy spotted two glowing white shapes perched in the lee of a bush, sheltering from the driving rain and westerly gale. They were very obviously, and immediately, identified as Hornemann’s Arctic Redpolls. It was not a difficult call. The only difficulty was looking at them directly, as the nearly pure white rump and flanks were burningly bright, threatening our retinas:
It had been a good twenty-four hours. For the first time, we felt calm and rewarded for our efforts. It was a bit odd to meet other birders at Hillswick, having met so few people on Unst, but we tried to be sociable. We had reasonable flight views of the Pechora Pipit and both got binocular views of the black and white mantle braces. If you squint very hard you can make out the dark wing panel, bordered by white wingbars above and below, on the montage picture below:
Like monks, Pechora Pipits are known for their silence on rising. We heard the flight call twice, a hard, almost electronic “dzitt!“, that was very distinctive. Also like monks, we nodded in silent appreciation:
Half an hour later we were watching the Great Grey Shrike in the village that some are speculating may be of the eastern race homeyeri (pictured above), when the Birding Gods finally delivered their special reward. It was whispered there was a Lanceolated Warbler at Wester Quarff, some 45 minutes south of us, but close to Lerwick and our evening ferry. Presumably whispered, because we could not quite believe this was true. What were the chances that two major Shetland specialities would both be on Mainland and pretty much on our route to our ferry on the only day we were travelling south? We gave thanks to The Gods and left immediately. Our suffering was being rewarded.
Seeing the Lanceolated Warbler was not easy. It had attracted a crowd, perhaps 120 people when we arrived, including the friendly faces of Ewan Urquhart and Jim Hutchins from Oxfordshire. The bird was feeding in a field next to the road, where there were cows and calves. The grass was quite long and viewing was difficult. I got lucky and happened to have a clear view when the Lanceolated Warbler crept out from behind this tussock. However, most people were unsighted and could not see it. This tiny warbler had the behaviour and colour of a mouse, weaving its way through the grass stems:
Hugh Harrop then took control of the situation, asked the farmer the move the cows away from that corner of the field and arranged for three people to walk slowly through the field so the bird could be walked across the road to the opposite field, where the vegetation was shorter and the light better. This worked well, the Lanceolated Warbler fluttering across the road, passing between Ewan Urquhart’s legs at one point. Once across the road, it continued weaving its way through the grass, occasionally coming out into the open, where I had the sort of views of Lanceolated Warbler that I had only dreamt about. It was a fabulous bird:
We felt elated and relieved. Finally, we had seen some of the Shetland specialities that we have long dreamed about seeing. Two Arctic Redpoll, a Pechora Pipit and a Lanceolated Warbler: it had been a good day by anyone’s standards. But of course, the Birding Gods are fickle beasts. They delivered a Myrtle Warbler to Mainland the next day. Having driven north away from Oxfordshire and an American nightjar, we now found ourselves driving south, away from Shetland and an American warbler. We could sense the Birding Gods smiling. But we did not mind, as so were we.
The eBird trip report for all the birds we saw, photographed and sound recorded is here.