This year’s wildlife-themed Christmas cake celebrates one of the best birds that I saw in 2025, the Siberian Thrush on Mainland Shetland. Made of clay and painted in acrylic, the bird turned out a little more blue than I had intended, but I think it still works as cake decoration:
Check out those undertail coverts!
Footprints.
I had intended to use real holly leaves and berries from our garden to decorate the cake, but fortunately I checked their toxicity first. I discovered that all parts of the holly plant, stem, leaves and berries, are toxic to humans. A lucky escape for my family!
Below, the real thing, photographed at Loch Asta with Ben Sheldon, as we travelled back from Fair Isle, a fantastic experience:
I first visited Fair Isle in 1986 as a seventeen-year-old, benefitting from a Richard Richardson bursary to cover the accommodation costs at the bird observatory. As an inexperienced inland birder, it was fantastic to see Yellow-browed Warblers, Red-backed Shrikes and Short-toed Larks in real life, not just on the page of a field guide or a bird report. Thirty-nine years later, with a new bird observatory just completed and with a handful of autumn trips to Shetland under my belt, the time felt right to return to the “Magic Island”. With my usual travelling companion Andy Last wanting a change from birding Shetland this autumn, I spoke to Ben Sheldon, who not having visited Shetland before, was immediately keen. We booked to visit Fair Isle from September 24th to October 2nd, staying at the new observatory.
The northern end of Fair Isle, from the air. Even from this height, the shelter offered to migrant birds crossing the North Sea by the cliffs and steep-sided geos on the island is apparent.The new, luxurious Fair Isle Bird Observatory.The lounge at the Obs. The ship “Good Shepherd IV” is in dry dock in North Haven and is visible in the centre of the picture.
The Observatory garden has decent amounts of cover and contained the most confiding Barred Warbler that we have ever seen for the first three days of our stay:
One of the novelties of Fair Isle is the Fulmars that that sweep down the roads of the island and rise on updrafts of air from the dry-stone walls of the island:
Seeing Fulmars coming straight down the road towards us at eye-level, brought me straight back to seeing these birds here on my first visit to Fair Isle.
We joined the pre-breakfast trap round each day. This superb adult male Red-backed Shrike was caught at dawn on Saturday 27th September, and was the first indication that a fresh wave of birds had made landfall on the island.
A Water Rail was another unexpected find in the Gully trap one morning, giving Ben the opportunity to ring this bird on Fair Isle:
SeekingStill Air
So much of birding is determined by the movements of air. Winds both propel and displace migrating birds. Whilst inherited genetic mechanisms may determine the direction and length of a bird’s migration, moving air, clouds and rain can also affect the route taken and are often the final factor in grounding birds, especially on coastal and island locations.
But whilst moving air is a huge influence on bird migration, we reflected that birders seeking out rare birds need to look for the opposite: they need to find still air. Still air is where the migrant birds are, once they have been delivered by moving air.
On Fair Isle, our days began by trying to guess where recently arrived birds might be found. The weather on our trip was dominated by blue skies and south-easterly winds for the first half of our stay, becoming strong southerly winds with rain and cloud later. We observed that later in the week the gardens and crofts at the south end of the island, usually such a reliable area for holding migrant birds, were being battered by the southerly winds and were often less productive.
Still air trumps habitat
In southerly winds, we tried heading north, to search the ravines and geos of the sheltered coast, where birds could be seen trying to find insects on the huge sea cliffs of Fair Isle. This would often involve sitting on cliff edges and looking down. A long way down:
Milen’s Houllan, with the Gannetries of Inner Stack and Outer Stack just off the north coast. Inner and Outer Stack, viewed from Wester Lother
These cliffs are not the natural habitat of Goldcrests, Yellow-browed Warblers or Redstarts. But there the air was still. On windy days, anywhere that held still air became a potential migrant bird trap. On exposed Fair Isle, even ditches offer some respite from the wind and may hold birds. This was memorably summed up by Oxfordshire’s very own Luke Marriner, now in his second season as an Assistant Warden on Fair Isle, who looked at the wind speed forecasts and said “if there is a good bird today, it’ll be in a ditch”.
We realised that to find birds here we had to put aside our assumptions about the habitat preferences of migratory birds, or simply checking bushes just because they were there, but instead see the island in terms of moving air and still air, and seek out the still air.
Red-brested Flycatcher in South Raeva geo. Ben checking out South Raeva geo.A cliff-face Goldcrest. A clifftop Yellow-browed Warbler.
Migrant birds seeking the shelter of cliffs brings them into contact with some of the more usual residents of Fair Isle’s seacliffs. The recording below captures calling Goldcrests and Fulmars, an unlikely species combination in most parts of the world (volume up!):
Down the rabbit hole
Luke Marriner also provided the most memorable phone message of the week. Ben and I were walking the ditches of Suka Mire in central Fair Isle, when Luke’s message arrived “There is a Corncrake in a rabbit hole at North Light!” Luke had flushed the bird from virtually underfoot during his census walk around the lighthouse and it had flown before running into a rabbit hole at the top of the cliffs at Lericum. We walked up and over Ward Hill, then down past Easter Lother Water to see if we could see it. After a little searching, Ben looked down at a different rabbit hole, only to see the Corncrake staring back at him, almost within touching distance. It shot out of the hole and flew out over the sea, to land half-way up the enormous sea cliffs here, a surreal location for a crake. Migratory birds have to adapt to the environments they find themselves in. Anywhere with shelter from the wind offers some form of safety.
Cliff-bound Corncrake! Ben (left) and Steve Arlow scan the cliffs for the Corncrake.
Migrants
Strong southerly and south-easterly winds are not great for goose and swan migration, but a few Barnacle, Greylag and Pink-Feet made it to the island during our stay. These migrating Barnacle Geese looked and sounded fantastic:
The croft gardens of Lower Stoneybrek, Stackhoull, Vaila’s Trees, Schoolton and Quoy were our most productive sites in the south of the island. I was admiring this Common Rosefinch at Schoolton…
… when a Bluethroat flew in and gave astounding views as it hopped around the garden:
This female Hawfinch was seen most days, briefly appearing at Schoolton, but we also had good looks at Burkle:
A likely continental Great Spotted Woodpecker, seeking trees. Ben on Ward Hill
We found a freshly arrived Barred Warbler at Vaila’s Trees (“trees” is a relative term on Shetland, think a few dwarf pines and shrubs in a small walled garden, with nothing over 1.5 metres tall) that popped up in front of me and starred me down with those intense eyes, before lumbering off back into cover.
In island terms, the rarest bird that we saw during our stay was Fair Isle’s fifth-ever Glossy Ibis. Part of large influx of birds into the UK, this bird continued northwards and was seen on Mainland Shetland later the same day. Where next?
Fair Isle’s fifth-ever Glossy Ibis fles north down the island.
Later in the week, the weather deteriorated, bringing southerly gales, cloud and rain. We did a spot of seawatching during one storm with fellow guests Phil Woollen and Jason, and picked out a couple of Sooty Shearwaters and Red-throated Divers fighting their way south.
Ben, Phil and Jason seawatching at Buness. Sooty Shearwater south past Buness
“Schreep” behind the sheep
The weather was now playing havoc with our travel plans. On 2nd October we were due to fly back to Mainland Shetland, but low cloud hanging over Tingwall airfield meant that the small inter-island plane never left Mainland. We would be stuck on Fair Isle for at least another day, and with the super intense low of Storm Amy moving huge amounts of air as she approached from the west, our concern was that we would be stuck on the island for days. I was trying to rearrange our travel plans by phone when I flushed a large pipit that gave a loud “schreep” call. It flew a short distance and landed in the grass behind a nearby sheep. I called to Ben, “Richard’s Pipit behind the sheep!” and we enjoyed decent views of the bird feeding in the grass, just west of Shirva:
Richard’s Pipit, sheep. Richard’s Pipit, schreep.
Dipping Dunnock
Ben is a very sharp birder. So much so, that he had managed to glimpse three species during our trip that I had yet to see as we entered our final planned day on the island: Peregrine, Blackbird and Dunnock. During the day, I pulled back Blackbird, as a few new birds arrived on the island. As dusk began to fall, we were passing Chalet on our way back to the Observatory, when a small dark passerine dived into the cover of the bushes in the garden. Panic stations, it was a possible Dunnock!
Keen to level up our trip lists, I took a step along the path through the garden and immediately flushed a pipit that called with a high-pitched call and then dived straight back into the shrubbery of the garden a few meters away. Ben and I looked at each other, we both instantly knew that this was a good bird. The call was not quite right for Tree Pipit and neither was its behaviour. The challenge was that this was a very difficult bird to see. In the remaining light, we only had four flight views, which produced no photos, and heard two flight calls, neither of which I managed to record due to wind noise. We returned to the Observatory with mere news of a “mystery pipit” at Chalet. Privately, our hunch was that this bird was not behaving like any Tree Pipit that we had ever encountered and the call sounded good for Olive-backed Pipit, but we had no recording.
With the weather clearing the next morning, we only had an hour before the plane was due to take us back to Mainland and it was a twenty minute walk each way to Chalet. Time was against us. But as we walked quickly down the main road towards Chalet, the mystery pipit rose from the sheltered side of the house and called again, before diving back into cover. The bird was still here, was still very elusive, but in better light did perch very briefly on the road allowing a few poor photos to be taken. I also managed to record a single flight call, whilst sheltering in the still air provided by the garden bushes. Sadly, there was no further sign of the Dunnock.
There was no time to process our pictures, we were on the plane back to Mainland Shetland within the hour, but our back of camera previews revealed a pipit with a smooth unstreaked mantle and a head pattern that looked good for Olive-backed Pipit. The bird’s identity was completely resolved an hour later when Fair Isle warden Alex Penn managed to get a decent picture of the pipit, which confirmed that it was indeed a fine Olive-backed Pipit. We would take that! The Olive-backed Pipit remained on the island for that day, but remained very elusive, hardly showing for more than a few moments at any one time. By this date, this was only the second Olive-backed Pipit seen in the UK this autumn, despite many birds being recorded in Scandinavia this year:
Despite the fact that I still needed Dunnock, we left Fair Isle feeling satisfied. It is a beautiful island with spectacular coastal scenery. We had covered over 160km/100 miles on foot in eight days and found a nice selection of scarce migrants, including Barred Warbler, Richard’s Pipit and Olive-backed Pipit. We totalled 108 species between the two of us, making it the most productive of the six autumn trips to Shetland that I have made, and we were on a single island for most of the trip. Only one thing was missing. A monster Shetland rarity.
From geos to geokichla
Now we were a full 24 hours behind our scheduled return. We had a rather bumpy plane journey back to Mainland, but Storm Amy was about to interfere further. Flights back to the Scottish mainland were being cancelled rapidly. We resigned ourselves to spending one, possibly two, nights on Mainland Shetland sitting out the worst of the storm, before travelling back on Sunday (a whole three days late) when the winds were due to reduce in intensity. Storm Amy was predicted to hit Mainland Shetland at 5pm on Friday, when the winds would pick up to 105kph/65mph and the first bands of intense rain would arrive. We had about three hours of possible birding time. It was Siberian Thrush time.
To date, the standout rarity of this autumn was the arrival of a first-winter male Siberian Thrush on Mainland. This is one of the ultimate Shetland rarities, a stunning bird, full of plumage features, as well as being supremely rare (about 12 previous UK records) and very, very elusive. The bird’s Latin name of geokichla sibirica literally translates as “Siberian ground thrush” but this bird had taken to feeding on elder berries in a small patch of trees by Loch Asta in central Mainland. This Siberian Thrush was typically good at hiding itself in the deepest clumps of leaves when it came up to the canopy to feed. With patience, glimpses of small parts of the bird could be made out, a blue wing here, a tail there, if you were lucky a glimpse of an eye or the head pattern. Some of our best views were had by standing in the loch:
In the first hour, this was my best view of the Siberian Thrush. It is the small square of blue-grey in the middle of the picture. In the second hour, things improved very slightly: the undertail coverts, tail and wing were visible here.
After two hours and no more than a few glimpses, I had nearly given up hope of getting a satisfying view of the Siberian Thrush. The skies were darkening, the wind was picking up, Storm Amy was nearly upon us. Then, like a dark shadow slipping away, an all-dark thrush flew low out of the back of the trees and crossed the road into the garden of the house by the loch. Optimistically, we peered over the wall of the garden, dreaming of seeing this mythical thrush feeding out in the open. And suddenly there it was. At first, it was feeding behind a plant pot, partially hidden. And then, casual as a Blackbird, it simply hopped out into an open area beneath the trees in the garden:
The blue! The head pattern!! The undertail coverts!!! We drank in dream views of the Siberian Thrush for perhaps 60 seconds, before it hopped away, out of sight again. Sometimes one minute can seem like eternity. And then the elation hit.
We ended the night staying at the Sumburgh Hotel, celebrating seeing one of the best birds, which provided an epic finale to a great trip, even if we were three days late getting home.
Our entire trip list, with all species recorded, photos and sound recordings, can be seen here.
With the heat continuing and Warneford and Churchill Meadows on my local patch gradually turning to straw, urban east Oxford felt more like the Mediterranean this week:
And then the Mediterranean came to me. I was packing the car to depart for a family celebration in Suffolk, when I was thrown into complete chaos as I heard the repeated “yee-ow, yee-ow” calls of a Mediterranean Gull approaching from the south! It flew overhead at a medium height, calling constantly. I whipped my phone out and just about managed to get a poor an atmospheric recording of the final two flight calls, before it disappeared north and away over Headington:
This is, without doubt, the best bird species yet recorded on my garden list.
In Suffolk, after the family celebration, I took my sister, her daughters and one of my daughters out onto some local heathland, where we experienced the amazing, evocative sound of churring Eurasian Nightjars:
Here I also managed to make apoor an atmospheric recording of two species that share the same habitat, but are not always heard singing together, Tree Pipit and Eurasian Nightjar:
Then back to see what the moth trap had produced in rural Suffolk. Highlights were a Small Elephant Hawk Moth, this huge Oak Eggar and a nice Dusky Sallow:
Oak Eggar mothDusky Sallow moth
A memorable day with a fantastic Mediterranean theme!
A quieter week on Shetland this year, dominated by cold north-westerly winds and regular rain. Andy Last and I based ourselves at Wethersta on Mainland, having stayed on Unst for the last couple of years, and went slightly later in the year, arriving on 8th October, to mix things up a bit.
In terms of species seen it was a rather front-loaded week, with some good birds in the first few days. In the second half of our stay, the winds swung around to the south-west and we hardly saw a migrant bird. It was quite tough going. Our total of 83 species on Shetland in a week is our lowest by some distance and reflects the lack of common migrants. What was more surprising was the lack of birders that we encountered. It was nice to bump into Roger Wyatt, Jim Hutchins and Ewan Urquhart at various points, but on a daily basis we hardly saw anyone all week!
Warbler Wonderland
The main focus of our efforts was finding migrant landbirds. We spent time, much time, looking at trees. Some we seemed to get to know on an individual basis.
Andy, communing with the trees at KergordSiberian Chiffchaff by Andy
There were a few Barred Warblers about. This bird was at Cullivoe on Yell:
The huge dump of Yellow-browed Warblers that occurred in late-September had mostly moved through by the time that we arrived. This Yellow-browed Warbler was at Valyie on Unst:
Yellow-browed Warblers often provide the sound of Shetland in autumn. This calling bird was at Kergord:
There was a nice selection of phylloscopus warblers present. This Arctic Warbler was in the Burn of Njugalswater, near Lerwick:
This Greenish Warbler was in the sycamores behind the house at Valyie on Unst:
It was great to hear the Greenish Warbler calling:
But the best of all the phylloscopus warblers, and in my mind one of the best birds of all, was the Pallas’s Warbler at Swining. Feeding low down, and calling occasionally, this bird displayed all of its fabulous features: the crown stripe and bright yellow supercillia, the double wing bars and the lemon-yellow rump. All packed into a tiny green and white phylloscopus gem:
Show me the stripes!
When you see a Pallas’s Warbler this well, you know that you’ve had a good autumn:
Not all of the warblers that we saw were green, white and stripey. I was scanning through the crop field at Valyie on Unst, when an unstreaked acrocephalus warbler began bounding through the crop towards me. Having spent a full eight hours trying to pin down the identification of what turned out to be a very elusive Blyth’s Reed Warbler in the very same field in 2022, it felt like history was repeating itself in front of me. However, this bird had a blindingly white throat, a dark crown, a short bill and a long primary projection: it was the Paddyfield Warbler that was last reported three days previously:
Paddyfield Warbler by Andy
In statistical terms, the rarest warbler that we saw was the candidate Central Asian Lesser Whitethroat, halimodendri, at Hunter’s Wood on Unst. We had the pleasure of bumping into Dave Cooper here, who played us his recording of the remarkable tit-like call of this bird.
Shetland is surrounded by sea and we did not entirely neglect the ocean. Below, sea-watching from Eshaness in a freezing sub-zero north-westerly. A constant stream of some 400 Northern Fulmars passed north, 3 Sooty Shearwaters were the highlight:
The sea and me.
This adult Great Northern Diver was in the bay at Scousborough. It is moulting out of summer plumage. The bill is also in a transitional state between the black of summer and the grey of winter:
No visit to Shetland would be complete without a picture of a distant vagrant seaduck. This year’s “spot-the-bird” picture involves many Common Eider and a single drake White-winged Scoter, all the way from north-western North America:
“Dude, the whole sky is red and green!”
The phenomenon that will live the longest in the memory, was the aurora borealis on Thursday 10th October. Aware that solar activity was peaking, Andy stepped outside just before 8pm and walked into the remnants of a huge solar storm. As the charged particles from a Coronal Mass Ejection Event funneled into the earth’s magnetic field, they collided with oxygen atoms in the upper atmosphere, making them glow green and red.
Andy ran back into the house, shouting the immortal words “Dude, the whole sky is red and green!” I ran outside and nearly fell over. A incredible aurora was playing out above our heads. The colours were clear to the naked eye and intense. A huge red bridge spanned the sky from the northern horizon to the south. Either side of the red bridge, the sky was glowing green:
Aurora Borealis above our accommodation in Wethersta
We staggered around, mouths open. As we watched, the colours changed and moved, but red remained dominant:
The apex of the red bridge, directly above us, a vortex of swirling red
Having always assumed that the colours in photographs of the aurora were exaggerated by the camera, it was astounding to see such colours with the naked eye. It was a truly incredible experience and only ended when the sky clouded over, but will be remembered forever.
Our eBird trip report of everything that we saw on Shetland, plus some birding near Aberdeen on the way north, is here.
Andy Last and I spent the final days of September and the first days of October on Shetland, taking the ferry from Aberdeen to Mainland. Having arrived in Lerwick, we took in some of the best birds in the town itself. Birding in Shetland can be a bit surreal at times and this year was no exception. Things started with something slightly blue, in a dung pile:
Bluethroat
Followed by something citrine, all wrapped up in a cloak of grey and white, on a nearby football pitch:
Citrine Wagtail
Was this the most costly Tescos visit ever?
We then made our way to the local supermarket to stock up on supplies to take with us to Unst, the most northerly of the Shetland Isles, and our home for the week. We had just entered the fruit and vegetable aisle when monumental news reached us: there was a Blackburnian Warbler at Geosetter.
With hindsight, our decision to casually finish our shopping before going to see the bird was a mistake. Whilst our bodies appeared calm, our minds were in a state of utter chaos, as we attempted to remember what food we needed, through an adrenaline haze of double white wing bars, black and yellow. This was also reflected in the bizarre contents of our shopping trolley. I asked the question of Andy, what would our friend Dave Lowe do? We already knew the answer. Dave would drop the shopping basket at his feet and take the most direct route to Geosetter, even if this meant punching a hole in the plate glass windows of the store. Think Terminator.
But we took the risk, finished our shopping, and then drove to Geosetter. Almost immediately we realised we had made a mistake. Having performed brilliantly for fourty five minutes, Britain’s fifth-ever Blackburnian Warbler had flown from the more open area near the top of the ravine, into the impenetrable scrub of the lower section. Unsurprisingly, it had not been seen since. We experienced a nasty feeling of despair, rising like an anxious tide. Was this the most costly Tescos visit ever? We forced patience. We joined those searching for a small bird in dense cover. Half an hour passed, with no further sign of the bird. Then another half hour. We scan through the dwarf trees and shrubs again and again. By now our decision to keep shopping was looking catastrophic. I decided to climb to the top of the ravine, I look back and take this picture of Geosetter:
Then there is someone waving in my viewfinder. I put the camera down. He is still waving. I look down at him, at the bottom of Geosetter. A birder has both arms above his head and is waving. This can only mean one thing. “WAVING” I shout at the nearest birders, whilst pointing down the hill at the waving man by the edge of the cover. Everybody looks up at me and then starts running away. Running to him. He has the Blackburnian. And moments later, so do we:
It was not the bright yellow face and breast or the double white wing-bars that struck me most when watching this bird move through the vegetation. It was the sheer amount of white in the tail. The outer two pairs of tail feathers were almost entirely white, creating bright flashes as it flicked around:
The sheer blinding luck of it. We had only been on Mainland a few hours and already had an American warbler in the bag. Plus we had completed our shopping. The pressure was off. We began making our way north towards Unst, taking in an Arctic Warbler on Yell on the way, just to remind ourselves what a proper Eurasian phylloscopus warbler should look like. Very nice it was too:
Then we began our stay on Unst. Our days often began at Hunter’s Wood, a scrubby field with a few dwarf birches and willows in central Unst, near our accommodation:
This area often held migrants and we enjoyed our birding here. We had Tree Pipit, Wheatear and Whinchat on our first visit; Andy found a nice male Crossbill and a Barred Warbler on our second visit, plus there was a Spotted Flycatcher, a Lesser Whitethroat and a flyover flock of Snow Bunting later in the week.
Male Common CrossbillFirst-winter Barred Warbler
Elsewhere, I found a Little Bunting on the road to Valyie, an individual with a strangely long deformed bill (the Little Bunting, not me):
Little Bunting, big bill.
We also flushed an unstreaked acrocephalus warbler from the burn at Burrafirth. This bird didn’t play ball though, we had four brief flight views (noting the lack of a rufous rump) and then it was gone, flying strongly south.
Hunter’s Wood also illustrated the importance of favourable winds when birding Shetland. Some southerly winds had deposited migrant birds in Hunter’s Wood at the beginning of the week but then began days of relentless, blasting south-westerly winds. The migrants that were initially present on the island moved on, but nothing replaced them. We recorded 18 species on our first visit to Hunter’s Wood, 23 on our second, but only 11 on our third, and a meager 7 species on our fourth visit. By the end of the week, Unst had a strange birdless feel, and even common migrants could not be found.
We left Unst to see the Veery at Luna, in north-east Mainland. This lovely new world thrush was a delight to see, feeding happily in the leaf litter under a small row of sycamores. We both agreed, that despite some serious competition, this was our Bird of the Trip:
Veery
Just a hint of a yellow juvenile gape was visible, evolved to stimulate its parents’ feeding response. Would it ever see another Veery again?
Find the snowman.
Our week on Unst came to an end and we travelled south early on October 3rd, with plans to search for the adult male Snowy Owl that had been reported from Shetland’s highest hill (450m) the previous evening. We joined perhaps five or six other birders, searching the alpine-like landscape of Mid-Field, up on Ronas Hill:
There are a lot of rocks up there. And more large white lichen patches than you may think. The cloud base was just below the summit, visibility came and went. We kept searching, coming across Mountain Hares, hiding in the rock field:
Eventually, once again, someone is waving. We walk down the north side of the hill to where the fabulous Snowy Owl has been located:
Male Snowy Owl
No stranger to harsh weather, the Snowy Owl had chosen a spot fully exposed to the north-westerly winds powering in from the Atlantic Ocean, but it seemed unconcerned, as we admired it from afar, a fabulous end to a memorable trip.
Watching the Snowy Owl.
Our complete trip list, with more photos and audio, can be found here.
My youngest daughter suggested making the theme of this year’s Christmas cake the fabulous Jack Snipe that graced the Lye Valley earlier this month. After a bit of experimentation with modeling clay and spaghetti (not natural companions of the usual Christmas cake), we came up with this!
A half-term family break to a friend’s house at Fife Ness. We drove up on Thursday 20th October, a filthy day. A deep low was situated just off the coast of Northumberland, pulling in strong winds from right across the North Sea onto the Fife coastline. Visibility was poor, the coast was battered by strong winds and rain. All the way up I was wide-eyed in anticipation. Twisting, invisible corridors of air began to connect Fife with birds migrating across northern Europe. Some of these birds may have come from Scandinavia. Some from much further afield. But all of these birds were suddenly pulled across the North Sea and in terrible conditions, sought the first land and cover they could find.
We arrived at Fife Ness on Thursday evening, I spent the last 30 minutes of light at The Patch, a small area of trees on the tip of the peninsular. Late October, rain on my face, an easterly wind in the sycamores. It does not get better. A Yellow-browed Warbler calls. The atmosphere crackles with anticipation.
The tiny wood is stuffed full of Goldcrests. Their constant high-pitched calls provide the backdrop. The sound of the easterly wind in the sycamores, the constant call of Goldcrests and behind them all, the distinctive dry rattle of a calling Red-breasted Flycatcher:
Red-breasted Flycatcher
Robins were everywhere, thrushes streamed overhead, Redwing calls a constant aerial soundtrack.
My most wanted was a self-found Pallas’s Warbler. The sycamores held Blackcaps (above), Chiffchaffs and a Lesser Whitethroat that was eventually ringed and proved to be a Siberian bird, blythi. Brambling and Redpolls passed overhead all day, Woodcocks zipped around. It was superb. Later in the afternoon I caught up with a dark shape at nearby Upper Kilminning, flitting away from the Robins, a Red-flanked Bluetail, always keeping under cover, always hiding the blue in the tail:
Birds were being found all around the peninsular. A Barred Warbler at Lower Kilminning, Yellow-browed Warblers at a number of sites. The nearby Isle of May produced a spectacular haul of 2 Bluetails, Pallas’s Warbler, Radde’s Warbler and tens of Long and Short-eared Owls. Over the next day, the easterlies faded, leaving behind them some extraordinary birds. The best, this Amur Stonechatstejnegeri which breeds no nearer than Mongolia.
The unstreaked orange rump, the dark brown mantle, contrasting with pale underparts and the pure white throat were all features I saw on the stejnegers at Westing on Unst in October 2019, but no doubt DNA analysis will have the last say on this bird’s identity.
Bird migration calmed down from intense high of the first few days. But even on calm days migration was apparent, these Pink-footed Geese from the Arctic, heading down the coast, over the forest:
I also visited the Hilton of all seawatching hides, the Fife Bird Club hide at the tip of Fife Ness. Having joined the club to gain access to the hide I was not disappointed: comfy office chairs on wheels (with back cushions too!); padded benches; a working and correct clock; lots of information boards, it was impressive! The sea watching was gentle, I did some simply because I live a long way from the sea. Gannets and Razorbills streamed past, Common Scoters flew past in small flocks, with a few Velvet Scoter and Long-tailed Duck past now and then too. Good numbers of Red-throated Divers were frequent, with singles of Manx Shearwater and Puffin being the highlights, alongside a small pod of Bottle-nosed Dolphins.
Velvet ScoterBottle-nosed Dolphins
The rest of the week saw some other nice moments. A beech tree reaching down to a small stream, its leaves cradling a rock surrounded by water. On the rock, under an umbrella of leaves, a Dipper, singing away above the sound of the stream:
We visited Tentsmuir Forest, Red Squirrels were hard to come by this year, but we glimpsed a few:
Dune Waxcap
The self-found Pallas’s Warbler may have to wait for another autumn. But the combination of those easterly winds, the sycamores on the coast, migrant birds everywhere with anticipation levels peaking, made for an amazing, intense and very special east coast migration experience.
Partial solar eclipse, peaking through the clouds.
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.
Juvenile Common Rosefinch, “in all its glory” – photo by Andy.
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:
Not much to go on!
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.
Far right: Andy, next to Roger Wyatt using a thermal imager to locate the Blyth’s Reed Warbler in the back of the crop field
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!
Back of camera shot from Roger WyattBack of camera shot from Dave Cooper. Note the short primaries, white undertail coverts and bulging fore-supercilium
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.
Blyth’s Reed Warbler – photo by Dave CooperWing detail – photo by Dave Cooper, my text. Blyth’s Reed has deep emargination on p3 and p4, Reed and Marsh only on p3.
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:
“Look at the white on that!” Hornemann’s Arctic Snowball. Going FULL SNOWBALL!
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:
The possible homeyeri Great Grey Shrike – picture by Roger Wyatt
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.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be birds,” and there were birds. But only the few would see them. And to do this, they had to pay the price.
The Birding Gods are fickle beasts. They give with one hand and take with the other. Having been deprived of a trip to worship the birds of Uganda with Dave Lowe and Ian Reid by a serious bike accident in June, I reasoned I had suffered enough. The Gods thought otherwise. I spent the summer recovering, walking, then cycling again. A planned trip to spend a week on Unst with Andy Last had looked in jeopardy, but I worked hard on my recovery and by late September, felt physically capable enough to commit to travel. This year, we would not base ourselves on Mainland Shetland, but rather headed north, to spend the week on Unst, home of the most northerly house, post office and lighthouse in the UK. We would be closer to the Gods. We would concentrate on finding our own birds. The Birding Gods would be pleased.
We left Oxford at 6am on Monday 26th September. A day I’ll always remember. Cause that was the day my belief in the benevolence of the Birding Gods died. By lunchtime, we were just south of Glasgow. We pulled into a service station. I glimpsed a thumbnail of a picture message from Jason arrive on my phone. I said to Andy “I think there’s a Nightjar in Oxfordshire“. Then, immediately, this:
The shock that rippled through the Oxfordshire birding community also rippled through us, in Scotland. But, unlike the other seventy people on that group whose lives at that very point in time had been thrown into chaos and who were desperately planning how they could escape work, family, or indeed any other sort of commitment at all, we were very calm. We were calm because we immediately knew we would not see this bird. It was six hours back to Oxford and we had a ferry to catch to Shetland that evening from Aberdeen. There was no decision to make. HAD I NOT SUFFERED ENOUGH? Obviously not, it was quite simply the best bird ever to turn up in Oxfordshire. A North American nightjar: better than the Oriole. Better than the Scops Owl. Better than the Surf Scoter. Much better than the Buff-bellied Pipit. It did not take long for our calm to turn into pain. We drove on. We suffered. We were well past Stirling before we spoke again. Andy turned to me and said, “Is it still there?” I checked and nodded, “Showing beautifully in the sunshine“. We birded the Girdleness peninsular, next to the Aberdeen ferry terminal, and found a Little Gull. At precisely the moment the Nighthawk took off from its fence in Wantage to continue its migration, our ferry pulled away from the docks in Aberdeen, into the teeth of a fierce north-westerly gale. It was going to be a rough night. Clearly, I had not suffered enough.
The next morning, our arrival in Lerwick was delayed by a couple of hours by the headwinds, so we had the chance to look for seabirds from the ship as dawn broke. In amongst the Fulmars, Gannets and occasional Bonxie, we found 5 Sooty Shearwaters shearing their way south through the North Sea. We docked in Lerwick, caught up with the Glaucous Gull in the harbour and the drake Surf Scoter at nearby Gulberwick, before we headed north to our home for the week, the most northerly island of Unst.
Glaucous Gull, Lerwick Harbour
We were based for the week in Uyeasound, right by the harbour and right by the Otters. We checked the local area every morning for migrants, before birding north through the island.
Uyeasound, on the south coast of Unst
Shetland in autumn is the land of Yellow-browed Warbler. They were out in force again this year, after a quiet year last year:
Some birds were quite vocal and we heard calling birds most days:
Most places had Common Redpolls too, calling fly-over birds were frequent:
But one of the highlights of this autumn was the influx of the big beasts from the north, Hornemann’s Arctic Redpolls. The birding machine that is Geoff Wyatt, found one just outside Uyeasound one afternoon when Andy and I were up in the north of the island, which we caught up with later in the week. We slipped off the island once, just to Mid Yell about 30 minutes away, to marvel at this fabulous white beast, before vowing that we must find our own:
At the ferry port this Minke Whale surfaced close by, the sound of its blow ringing around the bay, drawing attention:
Common migrants were a little thin on the ground, but sites with cover usually held something. We found Redstarts, Lesser Whitethroats and a Garden Warbler in various places, plus…
Spotted Flycatcher
Brambling
Meadow Pipit
Snow Bunting
Fulmar
Whooper Swans
Occasionally we popped in to pay homage to a local scarcity:
BluethroatBarred Warbler – photo by AndyRed-backed Shrike – photo by AndyOrtolan
We enjoyed an hour at Burrafirth, pictured above, one afternoon, with fog and clouds rolling in from Hermaness. We both thought we heard a Yellow-browed Warbler call from the bracken on the hillside. A quick clamber up revealed there was one, and a Willow Warbler and in the valley a Whinchat. Hermaness had no migrants, but still had good numbers of Great Skuas, we had 12 together at one point.
Andy at HermanessMe
But we sensed something had to change. We were finding birds, but just not the right ones. Andy’s camera stopped working after four days. I took this as a good sign. Is there a better way to get a close, beautifully lit view of a good bird, than not to have a working camera at hand? We couldn’t think of one. Another day passed. We considered whether we should take this strategy a step further and submerge all our optics in the Pool of Sacred Tears (aka the small garden pool by the road out of Uyesound):
This thought process paid immediate dividends, with Andy getting a glimpse of a small dark crake running between the willow bushes in the background. It was nearly dark before it ran back, confirming its identity as a Water Rail. We flushed this bird from near this area as we walked back along the road the following morning too.
We went back to the Gods for advice. Andy re-created the moment that the mighty sea-birder Erik the Red scored the first Fea’s Petrel for the North Sea in AD65, from this longship near Haroldswick. But the Gods were not amused. I slipped on the deck of this boat and twisted my injured leg. Had we suffered enough? Had we paid the price? Would we get our reward? Find out next time in “Shetland 22: the end”.
In a week of predominately westerly winds, it was pleasantly surprising to see new birds from the east arriving, as well as to catch up with some eastern species that arrived just before we did. There was also one rare wader from North America, a Semipalmated Sandpiper. In 2019 we had superb views of this species at Grutness:
This year another Semipalmated Sandpiper turned up across the bay at Pool of Virkie, favouring a small pool in the field next to Roger Riddington’s house. We decided not to try and get too close, but watched from a distance using our ‘scopes. It was in company with a juvenile Little Stint, at one point interacting with it and perching on the Stint’s back for a few seconds. In changing light, the distinguishing features from Little Stint varied from obvious to not very obvious and back again.
The Radde’s Warbler at Kergord got my vote for being one of the top three birds of the trip. It was typically difficult to see, but with a bit of patience we managed to piece together a view of the head and bill, then a flash of the pinkish-buff vent and tail as it disappeared before finally, we got a brief view of the whole bird for a moment and then it was back out of sight, creeping around in the base of a rosehip bush. As it was quite dark, we all choose to favour views of this bird, rather than photos, but Ewan Urquhart managed to get a nice picture of the bird as it perched out when he visited:
Photo by Ewan Urquhart
Also from the east was a Barred Warbler at Gulberwick, which perched up briefly before flying across the road:
A juvenile Common Rosefinch at Wester Quarff held particular interest for Andy. We visited this area on 9th October, a day that was forecast to be washed out by rain. We hoped to get an hour or so of birding in before the rain arrived, but even by 7:30am, when barely light, the rain began to fall. The Rosefinch was in a small (turnip?) crop by the road to Wester Quarff, so there was plenty of cover for it to shelter within. After over half an hour of standing in the rain searching through the Chaffinches, Brambling and Meadow Pipits that flitted around the crop, Dave and I were beginning to wonder at the point of this exercise. Especially when the best possible outcome was seeing a juvenile Common Rosefinch in the rain. But Andy has something of a Rosefinch obsession. We discussed how long we wanted to give this bird. I suggested another 20 minutes, to which Dave agreed, providing that included the 19 minute walk back to the car! However, Andy announced he wanted to give the Rosefinch another hour (!), so Dave and I agreed we would walk back and began scanning the bay for the eclipse drake King Eider, whilst Andy maintained his Rosefinch vigil. It all worked out in the end. I picked out the King Eider, Andy’s persistence paid off when the Rosefinch appeared and we all saw both birds:
The degree of Andy’s Rosefinch obsession can be demonstrated by the traditional bird-of-the-day discussion that the evening. We lost nearly the whole day to weather, so there were only two contenders: a drake King Eider and a juvenile Common Rosefinch. I would wager that 99% of birders would see this as a no-brainer. One is a dull brown juvenile finch, the other a magnificent brightly coloured sea duck, with a fabulous bill, just coming out of full breeding plumage. But not Mr Last. Dismissing the drake King Eider as “just another duck”, he then began to sing the virtues of the flank streaking, the wing-bars and even the evil beady eye, as positive virtues for the Rosefinch. Fortunately, democracy prevailed, with two-votes-to-one for the King Eider.
A Bluethroat in Burrafirth Quarry was one of the better marked autumn birds that we’ve seen, though it was very good at hiding in the dead thistle beds:
The juvenile Woodchat Shrike at Aith, worked its way up and down the fence line behind the houses. This bird had rather smart wing feathering. The pale-centered lower scapulars, with sharp chocolate brown edges contrasted with the dark-centered, pale-fringed greater coverts. The white patch at the base of the primaries was obvious and the primaries tips had pale fringes too:
A Rustic Bunting, found near Kegord, which also hosted the Radde’s Warbler, attracted a few birders:
Shortly after we arrived the Rustic Bunting flew along the hedgerow calling with a distinctive short, compressed, high-pitched “zit” call and perched up on the other side of the hedge. We knew this from the cascade of camera shutter noise we could hear. Seeing the photographers advance towards the hedge, we decided to wait on our side of the hedge to see if the bunting would appear there. The bird dropped down to feed out of sight, in a long ditch that separated the two fields. We waited. And waited. After 20 minutes a single “zit” call rang out from a bush 10 meters down the fence line from where the bird was last seen. I looked across at Andy and knew that he had heard the call too. We both move down the fence line and focus our attention on this bush. Suddenly Andy calls out “there it is!” and there, perched low down in the bush in front of us, is a rather fabulous Rustic Bunting:
Photo by Andy
Another nice bird from the east was this ghostly Siberian Chiffchaff which appeared in front of us in the small quarry at Quendale on a very wet late afternoon. We met Dan Brown and James Eaton working the iris beds here, Dan was using a thermal imager to try to pick out heat signatures from birds moving within cover, a glimpse of the future in migrant hunting perhaps?
That evening Dave and I went to a meeting of the Shetland Bird Club to hear a talk on Hummingbirds by local Shetland birder Jon Dunn. Jon began his talk by illustrating why he is so drawn to Hummingbirds by contrasting them with “dull migrant species” like Siberian Chiffchaff, the very species we had found at Quendale that evening. I like to think they have a subtle, delicate beauty of their own Jon!
Finally, our visit to Shetland ended with another lesson in remaining calm and reviewing evidence. News broke of a possible Eastern Yellow Wagtail at Gulberwick on our final afternoon. The bird was feeding in a sheep field:
The bird was a grey juvenile Yellow Wagtail, but as Dave asked whilst we watched it, was there anything about it that made it an Eastern Yellow Wagtail? It did not call whilst we were there, so there was no definitive evidence. We noted the slight yellow wash to the vent and at certain times the mantle had a very slight brownish hue to it. It was certainly not a classic monochrome individual. The following day a recording of this bird’s call was made, which confirmed that it was a Western Yellow Wagtail. Once again, the temptation to go for the rare option, that on Shetland in October is magnified by the location and the date, needed to be resisted. Keep calm and carry on!
