Dave, Roger and I had decided
to have a weeks holiday on the Shetland Isles and had travelled from Leicester
via train to Aberdeen and then caught the overnight ferry to Lerwick on the
Mainland. We were able to bird as we
approached Lerwick and saw plenty of Gannets and Eider and a few Fulmar, Shag
and a single Black Guillemot.
After disembarking and a short
wait for our hire car and then completing some provisional shopping we were
soon heading for Wester Quarff and hopefully a Brown Shrike that had been found
yesterday. It was raining when we
arrived on site but other birders gave us the good news that the bird was still
present. We couldn’t see it from the
northern side of the valley and so relocated to the southern side where we had
distant but good views of the shrike as it fed from fence posts and wires. While watching the shrike we had three Great
Skua pass over and a brief view of our first Yellow-browed Warbler. With little else we drove to the western end
of the valley where the burn entered the sea.
Close to shore were six Red-breasted Mergansers and we counted twelve
Black Guillemots in the bay. A forth
Great Skua flew over and we had nice views of a Willow Warbler and superb views
of a Yellow-browed Warbler that perched on a gate for quite some time. I regretted not having the camera at hand as
this was a great photo opportunity. With
news of an Arctic Warbler being present near Bigton we headed off in that
direction.
When we arrived at the site
other birders confirmed that the Arctic Warbler had been seen earlier but only
briefly. During our stay we had at least
one Yellow-browed Warbler and a second Willow Warbler but little else. We eventually had to move off as we were due
to be at our accommodation at 14:00.
When we arrived at South
Voxter Lodges we found several Twite feeding behind the lodge and I counted at
least fifteen.
After meeting the owners of
the property we unpacked and then went out again heading for the Loch of
Spiggie. This is an RSPB reserve but the
only hide was locked but we were able to look over the northern end of the lock
from the shore. There were both Mute and
Whooper Swans present, with fourteen of the latter. We also found a couple of Goldeneye, two
Red-throated Divers still showing at least some summer plumage and three
Slavonian Grebes. There was also three
more Great Skuas on the water. The
weather had now improved slightly and we drove the short distance to Spiggie
Beach. Here we had two more Great Skuas,
ten Ringed Plovers and three Guillemots.
Quendale to the south was our next site and there appeared to be plenty
of birds as we arrived. Many were
Starlings but there was a nice flock of circa thirty-five Twite and we had yet
another Yellow-browed Warbler. Retuning
to our accommodation we spent the last hour overlooking Aith Voe from the Quay
where we had another two Great Skua and a nice party of Golden Plover on the
field on the far side. As we walked back
to the lodge a Whimbrel was heard and then three were observed as they flew
over.
Whilst the weather had not
been great we had a very good first day with a good selection of birds.
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