Newton Birding

Well I’m just back from my annual two week holiday to Unst in Shetland.

THANK GOD !!! … IT WAS SHIT !!

Well, I say shit, what I actually mean is that it was quieter than previous years. This year I went with my mates again, as usual Rick and Andy were on board, and this year we were joined by Ricks mate Herbie, and for one week Herbie’s mate Mike stayed with us too…

5 men crammed into a tiny cottage with shit weather, and no good rares to be found is a recipe for disaster ! By the end of the first week the initial team spirit was disappearing fast and cracks were beginning to show… by the middle of the second week desperation had set in, we all hated each other, and were toying with the idea of mass suicide (or murder) by jumping (or pushing each other) off the high cliffs at Lamba Ness.

THE TEAM

Rick AKA “stressed birder” spent most the week getting pissed, spreading his belongings all over the tiny kitchen, loosing things and swearing lots. Ricks “gung ho” attitude to access got him thrown out of a number of crops, and eventually we were hounded off the island on our last day, after a confrontation with a very angry red faced crofter who thought Rick was trying to shag one of his prize ewes…

Stressed Birder

Herbie AKA “Percival. G. Crump” spent most of his time organising things in the back of his new van and not actually birding. When he wasn’t rummaging in the back of his van or organising his extensive library of ornithological journals, he would be arranging his food supplies or neatly folding his wardrobe of tweed and moleskin garments. Many an evening flew by with lively ornithological debates where Herbie would relentlessly advocate the merits of bringing back shooting and gun dogs to claim rarities …

Percival. G. Crump

Andy AKA “disabled birder” spent most of the week in lazing around in bed moaning about his bad back. We suspected his refusal to get out of the car because of his alleged “bad back” was just a cunning ploy to get us to do all of the leg work….. but of course its not very PC to mock the disabled… so we never said anything to him directly…

Disabled Car-bound Birder

Mike AKA “noisy snoring fuckin spawny bastard !!” spent the first three days keeping us awake by snoring like an asthmatic walrus. He then abandoned the dedicated “real” birders to go and join the crowds of twitching pager slaves on Fair Isle for a week. He happened to choose probably the best week Fair Isle has had in a long while, and so when he returned for the last couple of days with us no one spoke to him, and he was banished to sleeping outside in the van as punishment…

I contributed to the overall team spirit by having radical mood swings, similar to a hormonally unbalanced drunk woman, with serious PMT issues… I’d come into the cottage delighted with a barred warbler or something similar, and then descend into blackness when the evening news came through of a crippling sibe on one of the other islands… At the height of my moodiness I could often be seen stomping round the cottage slamming doors and swearing at the top of my voice about “FUCKIN BASTARDS ON FOULA !!!”…

I spent most of my time on Unst flogging my adopted Shetland local patch of Norwick all day. I blindly followed the belief that birds move and new stuff can come in anytime, I visited the same areas twice a day in the morning and afternoon to see what was new. In reality my efforts just ensured that I kept seeing the same yellow browed warblers, barred warblers and redpolls in the same places every day... ARSE ! 

Week one started really slow, on the first day we mopped up the existing birds, melodious warbler, shorelark… and …. well that was about it really…

Over the coming week we managed to dip a very elusive spotted sandpiper a number of times and came to the conclusion it didn’t actually exist. We found a lot of the usual autumn stuff, couple of rosefinches, a few barred warblers and yellow brows, and plenty of funky redpolls of the “north-western” or “Greenland” race, or whatever they call them these days…

Grotfinch

North-western,Greenland,Iceland, northern big fat redpoll thingies

At the end of the first week things picked up slightly when we found a white-rumped sandpiper.

About halfway through our stay the wind turned east for a day and all hell broke loose… Fair Isle was in danger of sinking under the weight of rare locustella warblers, Fetlar scored with a swainson’s thrush…..

Crippling catharus

VERY NICE but then ……….

………SIBERIAN THRUSH FOULA !!

AAARRRRGGGGHHHH !!!!! BOLLOX !!!!

After a whole evening of discussions swinging from one extreme to another we ended up booking 3 places on an early morning charter boat the next day. But then, we bottled it when we looked at the sky that night and saw light winds, twinkling stars and the moon shining brightly.

I hate twitching and this really was stress city…. In a funny way I was kind of relieved when I called up late that night to cancel our places and then opened some booze to block it all out…. well, until the next morning when I woke up and thought “SHIT !!! What the hell have we done….”. You don’t get many chances at a sibe thrush and we’d just pissed ours up the wall…

A few hours later we were more relaxed when the news came through that the sibe thrush had moved on, and we had found a glaucous gull and great grey shrike that morning, so things were not that bad..

Unidentified flying object...

Shrikey

WEEK 2

The second week started off feeling a bit rarer but we failed to score, only managing more yellow brows, barreds and rosefinches, while other islands were getting the goods, and Fair Isle…… well lets not talk about Fair Isle, suffice to say Mike was in fear of his life when he returned to a bunch of tired, bitter, twisted and demoralised birders on Unst.

In the middle of the second week we had a couple of really quiet days so we decided to try for the Killdeer…. AGAIN !! After 2 and half hours drive and a day hanging around Virkie on south mainland we dipped it AGAIN !! So… to raise our spirits we went for the long staying spotted sandpiper on Yell on the way back up…….. which we also managed to successfully dip !! BOLLOX !!

The remainder of the second week saw a slow dribble of scarcities and the odd crippler turning up on the rest of Shetland, while we saw the same yellow brows and barred warblers in the same bleedin bushes !! We'd been baiting the crop outside our cottage for over a week now with some quality wildbird seed... had that rare bunting showed up.... HAD IT BOLLOX !!! New in were a yellow brow and 2 common rosefinches outside our cottage, but that was about it.

A selection of bunting bait thieves in our crop

In the second week Rick and Herbie found a bluethroat in a fodder crop, but this excitement was short lived when the following day the crofter caught up with Rick and threatened to chop his hands off for bothering his sheep in the crop, a car chase ensued and the angry crofter was eventually lost when he was outwitted by Andy’s wildly erratic driving round the twisty lanes.

Eventually towards the end of the second week a couple of us managed to catch up with the elusive Lamba Ness spotted sand after about 12 days of checking the area !

Spotted Sandpiper

Finally, on our last day, Mike redeemed himself a little by re-finding a stunning hornemann’s arctic redpoll that was reported a few days earlier by a dudey bloke. This earlier report was instantly dismissed by the Unst rarities committee (chaired by Percival. G. Crump) as "a load of stringy old shite". This decision was made on the basis that when we headed out to look for the reported “white redpoll” and only saw twite ! However, on seeing this snowball a few days later we had to humbly “re-assess” the record !

It was our final evening before we left for home and Foula just couldn’t resist giving us one last kick in the rattlers, this time it came in the form of a MALE SIBERIAN RUBYTHROAT !! WHAT THE F…. ????

Again the compulsion to twitch and anxiety took over…. After a couple of hours on the phone we discovered that the only way we could make it to Foula the following day and get back in time for our ferry home to Aberdeen was by charter plane at the cost of £200 per head !! OUCH !!

Rubythroat plans were ditched and our last day was spent looking for the Arctic Redpoll again, which we couldn’t locate, and then one last chance for the Killdeer on our way to the ferry….

THANK CHRIST FOR THAT !!

Getting back on the Aberdeen ferry and our spirits seemed higher than they had been for the whole two weeks. I’m not sure whether it was finally catching up with the killdeer, or just pure relief that we were getting off those godforsaken islands, but whatever it was it felt good !…. We were going home and with some good counselling there was a chance we may be able to adjust ourselves back into normal society……

A BIG THANK YOU TO THE TEAM !!

Thanks to Rick for providing constant drunken entertainment and many top quotes from the stressed birder, like…. “NO NO NO…I DON’T BELIEVE THIS ??? WHATS GOING ON ?? THE TEAMS FRAGMENTING !!!”

Thanks to Herbie for introducing us to his many backward ornithological views, theories and formulas, our favourite of which was….

“Time in the field = birds”

We came to the conclusion this formula must be flawed somehow, and for us it  should read….

“Time in the field = FUCK ALL !!”

Thanks to Andy for driving us everywhere while he was in some serious pain, and putting up with our moods.

Thanks to Mike for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING !! He just kept us all awake with his snoring and fucked us all off with his tales of tripping over cripplers on Fair Isle while we were stranded on the barren ornithological desert that is Unst !! Seriously tho… nice one Mike !!

So.... to sum up….

We spent 2 weeks on a bleak desolate rock devoid of any rare birds while everyone else in the country scored cripplers. Our isolation in a remote and tiny cottage, and the lack of any rare birds, led to some lifelong friendships being destroyed, and we’ve come away not talking to each other…

SOME WISDOM LEARNED FROM SHETLAND IN 2007…

If someone tells you there’s going to be easterlies, DON’T BELIEVE THEM !! Easterlies are always three days away in Shetland, the weather forecasts always get it wrong, and the truth is they never arrive anyway.

Time in the field DOES NOT = birds

Time in the field actually = Fatigue, hunger, disappointment, despair, some more disappointment and then suicide…

Finally….

Thinking of going to Shetland ? DON’T DO IT !!… and if you really have to go, then make sure you go to Foula or Fair Isle, then at least you can console yourself with a lancy or rubythroat when the mainland gets a brown flycatcher.

Birds of note from Unst (other islands in brackets)

Black-throated Diver                                              
Sooty Shearwater                                                   
Killdeer (Mainland)
White-rumped Sandpiper                                          
Buff-breasted Sandpiper                                           
Spotted Sandpiper                                                    
Glaucous Gull (2)                                                     
Shorelark                                                                
Bluethroat                                                             
Swainson’s Thrush (Fetlar)
Melodious Warbler                                                  
Barred Warbler (many)                                           
Yellow-browed Warbler (many)                               
Great Grey Shrike                                                   
Red-backed Shrike (Fetlar)
Greenland Redpolls (Many, largest flock 16)             
Hornemann’s Arctic Redpoll                                    
Common Rosefinch (4)                                            
Snow Bunting (many)