Day 4, like day 3, dawned bright and not very breezy - a rare treat in these parts two days running - so we started with a thrash around our temporary home patch at Hoswick. A nice selection of common migrants were seen, and Jono took one for the team by putting up a Jack Snipe at the price of falling balls-deep into rancid mud. As he returned to the house to clean up, I managed to locate another Jack Snipe bobbing in the sunshine in the incongruous setting of a field full of Aylesbury type white ducks. As we watched it we chatted with Claire and Nick Oliver, who had just arrived on Shetland and were staying nearby, before re-grouping at the house and heading off in the car.
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| Black Guillemot, Toft |
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| Black Guillemot, Toft |
Before we got far reports started to come through of a Lanceolated Warbler on Unst. This was my nightmare scenario: a species notorious for being misidentified on Shetland, on an island two ferry rides away, which the other three in the team had already seen and would thus be less inclined to take a punt on. Any potential tension over this predicament soon dissipated however, when Claire and Nick offered a lift to Unst to anyone wanting to go for the Lancy.
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| Spotted Flycatcher, Hoswick |
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| Jack Snipe, Hoswick |
I really didn't want to leave the team, but Lancy was high on my 'most wanted' list, and after two previous Shetland trips without success, I felt I had to go for it. So we arranged to meet the Olivers in a lay-by and initiated divorce proceedings. There was no bitterness or acrimony as the paperwork went through, in fact it was all very civilised. But I'm sure I saw a tear in one of the team's eyes as I popped my satchel into the leather back-seats of my adopted folks' Range Rover. Perhaps in hindsight it was just jealousy at the fancier ride I was hitching, but I like to think not.
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| A poor year for Yellow-browed Warblers on Shetland - and this shocker at Gutcher was the only photo I managed! |
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| And speaking of shocking photos, this one of the Ring-necked Duck on Yell made the other members of the BBT team extremely jealous |
The report of the Lancy sounded pretty definitive, but I had learnt from previous bitter experience that such reports could quickly evaporate as a result of misidentification. Memories resurfaced of one particularly grim scenario in a rain-swept Quendale with birders chasing a 'Lancy' around which turned out to be a very wet Chiffchaff. As we boarded the first ferry from Mainland to Yell, news came through that the bird hadn't been seen since the original report - not great, but not terrible either as this ground-dwelling species could easily go missing for such a time. We were then approached by another birder, Phil, who couldn't get a space on the ferry from Yell to Unst, so joined our make-shift crew in the hope that the Lancy would reappear.
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| Bluethroat, Quoys |
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| Bluethroat, Quoys |
We had a few minutes to spare before catching the Yell-Unst ferry, enough to stop by a loch on the main drag to tick a distant Ring-necked Duck. But just as we were about to board the ferry, the worst case scenario unfolded: news reached us that the 'Lancy' had been reidentified as the much commoner Grasshopper Warbler.
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| Bluethroat, Quoys |
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| Bluethroat, Quoys |
My eye started to twitch like Herbert Lom in the Pink Panther films at this point, but we quickly concluded that we had passed the point of no return and pressed on to Unst. We didn't even bother to seek out the Gropper site and headed straight for a quarry at Quoys where a Bluethroat had been reported. An hour's kicking around produced nothing and then Phil managed to deduce that the dropped pin we had made for based on the Birdguides app had been dropped in the wrong place, and we were looking in the wrong quarry!
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| Bluethroat, Quoys |
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| Bluethroat, Quoys |
Heading a mile back down the road we quickly found the correct spot and within minutes had located the Bluethroat. This normally shy species first appeared at the back of the quarry hopping around a rusty manger, but then to our surprise and delight it started to head in our direction, and kept coming until it was barely a few metres away. A characterful bird, it completely saved the day with such a performance, and significantly lifted our spirits for the rest of the trip to Unst.
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| Little Bunting, Gutcher |
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| Little Bunting, Gutcher |
On the way over whilst waiting for the Yell-Unst ferry we had seen a Yellow-browed Warbler in the last garden before the slipway, but were unable to locate a Little Bunting being looked for by Yell resident Adrian Kettle. On the way back Adrian was still staking out the same garden and got us onto the Little Bunting with plenty of time to get the final ferry of the day back from Yell to Mainland.
In the meantime I had, of course, missed a belter of a day with BBT. Bradders had found a Radde's Warbler at Kergord, and Jono had picked up an adult White-billed Diver at South Nesting, plugging the gap on his trip list as he was absent when we saw one on the Northumberland coast on the way north. The Olivers were keen to catch up with at least one of these before dusk so we headed for the Radde's and managed fleeting views as it skulked in the long grass.
We returned to Hoswick and I was reunited with the rest of the team just before the decree nisi was pronounced. We patched things up over dinner and agreed never to speak of my unfaithfulness again. As for the Lancy, well that goes into the 'good reasons to keep going back to Shetland in Autumn' category for another year...
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