Natural Selection

I’ve been a bit busy to do a blog lately, but I’ve been meaning to do something on the bird highlights of my recent trip to Shetland. They came at each end of the trip, and one was rather more bittersweet than the other.

For the first time on my northern ventures I stayed on Whalsay for a few days. Whalsay is sometimes a stopover en route to Skerries, but there isn’t much accommodation. With the opening of a new B and B at The Old Manse I was able to spend a couple of days on the isle. It’s bigger than Skerries, and has a few resident birders.

I walked from my digs to the extreme east of the island at Skaw. There is a golf course here, and by the pool was an extremely smart looking Golden Plover. I genuinely thought to myself ‘that bird is so striking it could be an American Golden Plover’, taking a couple of pictures to look at later as northern Golden Plover are often more colourful.

Halfway through the long walk back to Marrister I received an alert from the Shetland Scarce Birds WhatsApp. Brian Marshall, who I later discovered lived a couple of doors from where I was staying, reported an ‘AGP’ by the pool at Skaw. It had to be the same bird, and when I trudged back Brian and another Whalsay birder John Lowrie Irvine were photographing the same bird I had.

Note the dark ‘armpit’ in the first picture, which is diagnostic. Note also the far dowdier Golden Plover in both pictures, if I had seen this first time round I might have been quicker off the mark

Fast forward through a largely uneventful week birding on Skerries and last Friday there was finally some easterly element in the winds. By late afternoon I had still only managed to see two Willow Warblers and an unidentified very elusive brown warbler by the water plant.

What was presumably the same elusive brown warbler dived into bushes nest to Rocklea where I was staying. I stood and waited for it to come out. What actually appeared was a dainty phylloscopus warbler with a long eye-stripe, short wing bar and off white underparts.

I knew it could only be a Greenish Warbler. Even though I’ve found four on Skerries I was over the moon, as it’s a good bird and it was also some redemption. I got some record shots the best of which are shown below. I assumed they would be starters for ten, but the bird had other ideas and never reappeared in front of me or others who were looking.

I had all the time in the world to start the holiday well, and I didn’t take it and messed it up. I had less than 30 seconds to salvage it at the end and took the opportunity. That’s birding, everyone makes mistakes sometimes and the best you can do is learn from them and improve.