Wednesday 15 November 2017

King Eider at Wester Quarff 11/11/2017

A drake King Eider was found last week (4th) at Wester Quarff by Russ Haywood, being a bogey bird of mine and what was a stunning bird I decided to head down with Paula for a look.

Paula and I arrived on site late morning and the Eider flock could be seen a piece offshore among some Mussel Lines.  We set up the scope and I began scanning the flock for the drake, it took a good 15 to 20 minutes but I eventually picked it up among the Eiders.

I struggled to find it sometimes as it could easily be lost among the quantity of males that were in the flock but it always reappeared again.

Now was the other task of trying to get Paula onto it, we only had one scope and the bins wouldn't work with the distance, there was a lot of switching seats and shifting of the scope but we just couldn't get onto it this way. It was only a few degrees outside and there was only brief windows without rain so we decided to come back later in the winter when we could actually come outside and see it.

Original Photo (its in there somewhere!

'Solid photographic evidence', it may be a grey blur but its tickable!

The King Eider was my 280th tick in Shetland, most likely the end of my successful autumn with at least 8 additions to my Shetland List.

Many thanks to Paula for the run around and taking me to it!

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