We were leaving Shetland on Monday 13th October and after several days of failing to find our own birds, Bradders treated us to a mildly twitchy final day sweeping up a few minor rarities in south Mainland before heading for the port. This enabled us to catch up with a distant Blue-winged Teal at Loch of Spiggie and a much closer Barred Warbler at Clickimin. A few last minute trip ticks in the form of Purple Sandpiper and Knot were added in Lerwick as we finally changed out of our smelly wellies ready for the ferry.
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| Barred Warbler, Clickimin, 13th October |
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| Barred Warbler, Clickimin, 13th October |
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| Bressay Lighthouse from the ferry |
As with the journey up we would be stopping at Orkney so leaving in daylight which allowed us to see a few Long-tailed Duck outside Lerwick harbour but conditions were not as conducive to sea-watching as on the way up.
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| Long-tailed Duck outside Lerwick 13th October |
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| Long-tailed Duck outside Lerwick 13th October |
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| Guillemot, Lerwick Harbour, 13th October |
We'd had no luck with rare Scoters on the way north but planned to put that right on the way south as a White-winged had been seen in Lunan Bay which we visited all too briefly at the start of the trip. Despite there being thousands of Scoter in the bay we located the White-winged surprisingly quickly and enjoyed good 'scope views of it displaying to a female Velvet.
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| Shetland, 13th October |
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| Shetland, 13th October |
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| Purple Sandpiper, Lerwick, 13th October |
We also had one eye on reports of a Black Scoter travelling north up the east coast. Triangulating theoretical flight times of scoters with real time reports we calculated that if we found a coastal viewpoint at around 1300 we would have a good chance of intercepting it. Stag Rocks looked like our best option with parking right on the coast and not too big a detour from our route. We set up scopes and checked our watches. Right on cue a group of about 20 scoter came into view distantly from the south, and although they got a bit closer, they remained too far out to identify anything other than Common-types with confidence.
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| Black Guillemot, Lerwick Harbour, 13th October |
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| Twite, Ireland, 13th October |
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| Twite, Ireland, 13th October |
We headed back north to Cocklawburn, a regular haunt of Black Scoter, but it wasn't there either so we decided to cut our losses and resume the long journey south. Two days later and it was settled on the sea at Goswick, just south of Cocklawburn, suggesting that we had the right idea at least! And that was pretty much it for the trip birdwise, and we returned to our respective homes later that evening with an excellent trip list and some great memories.
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| Drake White-winged Scoter (right) with female Velvet Scoter, Lunan Bay, 14th October |
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| Distant but identifiable White-winged Scoter, Lunan Bay, 14th October |
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| Twite, Ireland, Mainland Shetland, 13th October |
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