Quite Unusual.

The south easterly continues to bring the usual fare to the patch, those being - 3 Blackcaps, 8 Willow Warblers, 2 Pied Flycatcher, a Whitethroat, 4 Garden Warbler, a Tree Pipit, a Song Thrush, 2 Common Sandpipers, 3 Redstarts, 2 Spotted Flycatchers, 6 Ruff, a Lesser Whitethroat and a Whinchat. More unusual birds were a total of 12 Lapland Buntings in various places about the patch, including 4 birds in a neighbours driveway ! Another break from the norm was 3 Otters feeding around the west side of Scatness.


Lapland Bunting.

Blackcaps.

Garden Warbler (or in this case Beach Warbler !).

Lesser Whitethroat.

Redstart.

Whitethroat.

Willow Warblers.

Otter.

Waggy.

Yellow Wagtail added to the patch year list with a bird on one of the beaches in front of the house, elsewhere around the patch - 3 Blackcaps, 2 Willow Warblers, 2 Pied Flycatchers, 4 Redstarts, 1 Spotted Flycatcher, 1 Whitethroat, 1 Garden Warbler, 1 Whinchat and a Song Thrush. Wader wise, there was 6 Knot, 5 Ruff, a Bar-tailed Godwit and a Common Sandpiper. Still a bit hard going with a strong south easterly still blowing and lashing down with rain for most of the day.

Pied Flycatcher.

Yellow Wagtail.

Whitethroat.

Bar-tailed Godwit.

Common Sandpiper (not some weird long billed, wing barred small Shearwater !).

Ruff.

Spotted Flycatcher.

More.

More Migrants in the garden than on the rest of the patch ! This isn't too surprising as I reckon my garden is probably now the largest patch of trees at Scatness. In the garden - a Pied Flycatcher, a Redstart, 2 Spotted Flycatchers, a Garden Warbler, 2 Willow Warblers, 2 Blackcaps and a Whitethroat, on the rest of the patch - a Ruff, 11 Wigeon, 5 'alba' Wagtails, 13 Sanderling and a long overdue Song Thrush.

Blackcap.

Pied Flycatcher.

Ruff.

Overdue.

A pretty decent day on the patch, which started wit a long overdue Redstart (none in the spring !) in the garden and a fly over Greenshank. Elsewhere at Scatness there were 2 Blackcaps, a Willow Warbler, a Garden Warbler, 9 'alba' Wagtails, 3 Arctic Terns, 2 Whimbrel and 3 Ruff.
The Little Stint on Scord Beach was well and truly murdered as it showed down to 6 feet (eventually).
Still a bit tough going, with the south easterly touching force 7 this afternoon ! A bit of the wet stuff forecast for tonight, so hopefully the patch should be swamped with migrants in the morning, but as this is Scatness, it probably won't be !


Redstart.

Spotted Flycatcher.

Garden Warbler.

Pied Wagtail.

Ruff.

Little Stint overkill !

Dunlin.

Movement.

A bit of movement on the patch today - 2 Merlins, 2 Spotted Flycatchers, 2 Blackcaps, a Willow Warbler and a Whinchat. Pretty hard going though, with a force 5-6 south easterly blasting through most bits of cover.


Spotted Flycatcher.

Willow Warbler.

Tail less Blackcap.

Whinchat.

Strange Days.

A strange day indeed - at 7am I was in the living room, with the customary ‘wake up’ brew and cigarette, scanning the shoreline in front of the house, when I picked up a Seal thrashing around about 20 metres offshore, got the ‘scope onto it to find it was scrapping with an Otter ! This went on for a good 5 minutes with the Otter always trying to stay behind the Seal and avoiding it’s snapping jaws, after a while another Seal turned up and joined in - net result, both Seals ripped the Otter to pieces !!!
After this disturbing incident, it was outside to empty the moth traps - an impressive 436, nothing unusual in the Moths, but a big count nonetheless. The second disturbing incident of the day was a dead Wren in the bottom of one of the traps. So that was 2 deaths witnessed and it wasn’t even 8am !!!
After it being south-easterly all night, did a quick check of the trees in the garden - a single Willow Warbler.


Willow Warbler.

One of the trays from the moth trap.

After breakfast (and a repeat episode of ‘Robot Wars’), news broke of an Arctic Warbler at Sumburgh Head, incentive indeed to get out and thrash the patch ! Checked the garden again before leaving, Willow Warbler still there, then as I climbed over my fence to go and check the walls along the shoreline, I flushed another Warbler out of the nettles along the fence line. Bins up, on it, bigger than Willow Warbler, wingbar, long primary projection, pale legs, stout bill and ‘super’ not meeting above the bill - Arctic Warbler !!! Garden tick, patch tick and year tick all in one go. The bird then started to move away from me along the fence line, so I followed to try and get at least a record shot, the bird then got near to a neighbours garden (who was out cutting his lawn) and took flight over the house roofs and back into my garden. As I got back to the garden, the bird popped up into a dead Christmas tree about 20 feet away, I managed to get a few record shots (mostly blurred with swaying vegetation getting in the way and messing with the auto focus). As I was taking the very last photos, another bird popped up into the tree and called aggressively - another Arctic Warbler - and then chased the first bird over the fields towards Scord followed by the Willow Warbler. Now this is where it starts to get a bit ‘silly’ - the first bird along the fence line was definitely an Arctic Warbler, and so was the second bird in the Christmas tree, however, after looking at my record shots of the first Christmas tree bird and a brief consultation with Dr double ‘R’, turns out that this bird was a Greenish Warbler !!! (shorter primary projection, dark legs, smaller size and thinner bill).

Greenish Warbler (showing shorter primary projection in second picture).

I then went off and checked all the available cover around the Scord area (Ness Engineering, Scatness Broch, Betty Mouats and all the nettles and thistles) - there was no sign of either bird, the only other Warbler that I picked up was a Garden Warbler. Called in back at home to check the garden again to see if they had come back somehow - the Willow Warbler had, but nothing else. Not giving up (and being quite annoyed at the situation) I went back out around Scatness Broch and walked all the fields and fences between there and the airport control tower - success - the Arctic Warbler was working along the fences at the back of the sheep field, managed a few distant shots of the bird before it took flight again, quite high, and landed in the Old Scatness Dig, needless to say, as I got to the dig there was no sign of it again !
A very strange day indeed, but Arctic and Greenish in the garden was fantastic !

Arctic Warbler (heavily cropped due to distance).

Slow.

Another slow day on the patch. Light south-easterlies all night produced a Willow Warbler, a Whitethroat and 5 'alba' Wagtails. A few quite showy seabirds were scant compensation.

Shag.

Gannets

Sunny.

A lovely calm and sunny day, but not many birds about - the highlight being a Ruff over the house late afternoon.

Fulmar and sunset.

One More.

One more added to the patch year list - a Barred Warbler in the gardens at the end of the Scatness road (accompanied by a Whitethroat), an elusive git that took two attempts during the day to get half decent views, when it finally did show fairly well, in the open on top of a wall for about 3 seconds, it was lashing down.
Elsewhere on the patch - a Black-throated Diver in Quendale Bay was presumably one of the birds that have been in the bay all summer, a single Knot in West Voe and a couple of Sanderling on Scord Beach, were the only waders of note. The day ended with 2 Swallows around West Voe car park.


Rock Pipit.

Knot.

Black-throated Diver.

An afternoon visit to the east side of Scatness resulted in this fine Otter, knocking a serious hole in the local Butterfish population (caught and ate 7 in 25 minutes !).

Otter (mmm, Butterfish !!)