Searching.

Being pushed for time, only had a short while on the patch, so spent most of it searching for yesterday's Black Redstart - no sign ! A quick look in West Voe and the King Eider was still there along with a Common Scoter, plus 8 Red-throated Divers and 2 Great Northerns. 2 Robins were in the garden.

Robin.

Common Scoter and Long-tailed Ducks.

Great Northern Diver.

Greylag Geese.

Red-throated Diver.

'Now where's that Black Redstart got to ?'.

Return of the King

The plan was to thoroughly do the patch before the Grand Prix started, but this didn't happen, as I started at West Voe, the King Eider was showing pretty damn well about 50 yards offshore, so it seemed prudent to take advantage of this (a Common and 3 Velvet Scoters also in West Voe). So after about 90 minutes of pissing around with the camera headed back home, and on the way finding the surprise bird of the day - a Black Redstart, which was being chased about the place by a Robin, adding to this a Waxwing turned up in the garden as well - a pretty decent day for very little effort ! Especially as the King Eider has been over the other side of the Voe for the last few days (and therefore not on the patch !).



Waxwing.

King Eider.

Common Scoter.

Black Redstart.

2G, 2B -

Too Good - Seeing Vettel get the drivers world championship, anyone would have done as long as it wasn't the moaning Spaniard !

Too Bad - A bit of 'heart in mouth' stuff seeing Schumacher almost get decapitated in the first lap, I know the man can be something of a prick at times, but the incident was pretty bloody close to being a blood bath !

Don't lose your head !

The End.

The fat lady is now in full song !

It looks like that's definitely the end of the Autumn, 2 bouts of south-easterlies this week, and nothing ! A walk around the patch today, and 14 Lapland Buntings, 33 Snow Bunting, a Scaup and a fly over Waxwing was about it !
A few Winter Moths have been turning up around the windows of the house the last few nights.


Winter Moth.

The Return.

Today on the patch saw the return (or new birds maybe) of Lapland Buntings, with a flock of 14. Also a flock of 10 Snow Buntings were out on the headland, 3 Common Scoter were in West Voe, 2 Goldeneye, 5 Tufted Duck and a Scaup were on the Loch and a Robin and a Song Thrush were also seen.

Snow Bunting.

Rock Pipit.

Scaup (with Tufties).

2G,2B.

Too Good - well done to the Horror Channel as they are now doing a full re-run of Twin Peaks weekday nights at 9pm, an amazingly weird series that makes Lost look like a Sunday sermon (which, indeed, it did turn out to be !).

Scenes from Twin Peaks.

Too Bad - The Discovery Channel - find some new subject matter, for Zod's sake. We get the picture - the Nazis were bad, elephants need a lot of water, sharks are threatened, buildings fall down in earthquakes etc etc - most people have 'discovered' these things several times on the telly, time to change the channel name I think, to something like 'The Re-Hash Channel' !

Calmer.

A much calmer day, at least I could see the duck flock in West Voe, though all of them were on the Sumburgh side (King Eider still present), a rather showy Lapland Bunting and a Robin were the only other things of note.

Lapland Bunting

Stormy Monday.

A proper stormy Monday, with a raging south-easterly gusting 60 mph ! No sign of anything in West Voe, not surprising as the sea was being whipped up to a white froth, elsewhere around the patch - 2 Lapland Buntings, a Snow Bunting, 20+ Fieldfare, 15 Redwing and a Robin.

Fieldfare.

King Nothing.

Having already had suspicions of there being a King Eider in West Voe on the 1st Nov (an issue that was discussed with members of the 'patches commission'), it was time to take the 'scope out for the day to West Voe (I was also going to do this on Thursday, but the flock was a good way out, too far for some subtleties anyway), luckily this time all the ducks were fairly close in to the Scatness side, the bird was immediately visible, preening, about 100 yards offshore and did indeed seem to be a female King Eider ! There were however some features that didn't seem to fit - the flanks seemed to show a mix of King and Common features, the scaps and some mantle feathering looked better for Common Eider rather than King and the breast feathering looked to be barred (although only when the bird was preening). After about a half hour of deliberation I phoned the 'encyclopedia harvica', who then came down for a good look and we both agreed that some of these features were a bit odd, after more deliberation we came to the conclusion that the bird is in 1st winter plumage and has retained some juvenile feathers (particularly the scaps). After watching the bird for over an hour, the sun finally came out, and the features of King became glaringly obvious. I'm pretty sure that this bird would have been nailed earlier if (A) it had not been blowing a gale all week and pissing down, (B) the flock was as close in earlier in the week as it was today and (C) if I could have been arsed to take the 'scope out one day (today is only the second time that the 'scope has left the house since returning from Gujarat in March !).
Today should have been quite celebratory with this find, however, it was somewhat marred by views expressed (not to me, I may add !) by the usual tosser, suggesting suppression or incompetence - "bizarre, bizarre, blah, blah, yaki dah, etc, etc".
Other 'stuff' seen today - 1 Common Scoter, 1 Velvet Scoter, 2 Waxwings plus a Little Auk in Quendale Bay.

King Eider (the last 2 shots 'digiscoped' and as you can see by the quality, I've clearly forgotten how to do this !).

Waxwing.

A regular occurrence in the Spiggie Hotel ?

Gimme Shelter.

West Voe seemed to be 'the' place today, with a good few sea ducks that presumably took shelter there after yesterday's storm. Among the Eiders and Long-tailed ducks were, 1 Velvet Scoter, 1 Common Scoter, a Slav Grebe, several Red-throated Divers and a couple of Great Northern Divers, as well as 2 Otters and a pod of Harbour Porpoise. Around the rest of the patch - 2 Waxwing and a Siskin in the garden, 13 Whooper Swans, 4 Scaup and 3 Tufted Ducks on the Loch and 2 Snow Buntings on Sanblister Beach.

Whooper Swans.

Snow Buntings.

Common Scoter.

Eiders ?

Red-throated Diver.

Slavonian Grebe.

Velvet Scoter.

There hasn't been one for a while, so here goes -

2G,2B - Too Good - Proof of the lack of common sense in today's 'yoof' world - ouch, how did that happen ? Er...

Too Bad - Shetland in the 'top 10 places to visit in the world' - one place above the Great Barrier Reef ! - Oh No, not more tourists ! It could be good for the local economy I suppose, now if only there was a wildlife tour company up here, that could charge them the earth for a week's worth of bollocks ......hmmm, if only !