Our last full day on Shetland started with us emptying the fridge for one final breakfast and cracking a few more slipway jokes before heading out into the field. First stop was a report of a possible Baikal Teal at Loch of Benston - plausible given the recent presence of one on Fair Isle - which had to be checked out. Satisfied it was 'just' a Garganey (still a Shetland tick for all of us) we moved quickly on to Kergord. A Bluethroat had been reported there in the 'Rustic Bunting ditch' and the team were keen to see it. We walked slowly down the hedge and it duly sat up on a post - too easy.
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| Bluethroat, Kergord |
It was my second Bluethroat of the trip and to see the first I had crossed to Yell then Unst. At this point the rest of the team hadn't left Mainland the entire trip but were keen to put that right, and so a visit to Yell, for tea with the fittingly named Kettles, was proposed. Birders being birders, before we arrived at Adrian's house, we met him on the road scouting for the Ring-necked Duck which I had seen a few days before. We couldn't relocate it but a miserable looking Great White Egret near his house was our second of the trip.
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| 'How did it come to this?' asks a sodden Great White Egret on Yell |
After enjoying the Kettle's hospitality it was time to head back to Mainland and the ferry home. A couple of Bonxies in the sound between Yell and Mainland were our first of this Shetland visit. They were also our last 'trip tick' before we boarded MV Hjartland for another extremely smooth journey back to Aberdeen.
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| Great Skua off Yell |
The end of a Shetland trip is always a bit of a downer, especially with a 600 mile journey ahead. But there was one more bit of potential excitement to be had about half-way home in West Yorkshire. On Thursday night, as we were preparing our penultimate meal in the Hoswick pad, a Temminck's Stint at Swillington Ings had been reidentified as a Least Sandpiper - a tick for Jono. Within the hour it was reidentified again as a Long-toed Stint - a tick for all of us given that the last twitchable bird had been in the 1980s when Bradders could barely drive a pedal car, let alone a Volvo!
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| Long-toed Stint - a tiny bird a long way off! |
Swilly Ings was just a 5 mile detour from our route south so it was barely an inconvenience to call in for a mega-tick and lunch courtesy of an extremely busy reception centre at RSPB St Aidans, to give it its proper name. We had opened a book on the way down about which birders on our ferry would beat us to it, and the odds on Cliff Smith being among them were pretty short. Sure enough, a tweet from Cliff confirmed he had seen the Stint just as we were parking up! Also there was Gary Thoburn whose lens I had returned on the ferry the night before, so this time Howard and Nick Oliver came to the rescue with the loan of cameras and lenses so I could grab a few record shots.
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| Amazing magnification on Howard's little superzoom |
It was a satisfying end to a great week-and-a-bit, and meant that I maintained my record of a tick on each of my Shetland trips to date, even though this one wasn't actually on Shetland! The rest of the journey was painless, and I parted company with the team near Huntingdon, very much hoping it would not be our last Shetland adventure.
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| The long toes of the Long-toed Stint! |
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