Today we flew into Fair Isle from Tingwall for our annual summer visit.
Monday the 5th
The south of Fair Isle
We arrived in Fair Isle at about quarter to ten and then headed down the Island with Triona and Stewart to Quoy.
After spending a while at Quoy, Stewart took Abby and I out on his boat.
A young Wren which landed right next to the boat.
"INCOMING"
When we came back from the fishing I went over to Haa to see Tommy, Liz and Henry
Eyebright
A Rock Dove
Devil's bit Scabious
A flock of Shalders over head
A perfect line between the sky and clouds
After being at Haa for a while Henry and I went out birding
A Sea Pink or Thrift
An egg shell Henry found at the Chapel brae
Field Gentium
Hjukni Geo
A Plant Hopper (A Neophilaenus species, most likely Neophilaenus exclamationis)
A micro moth
Pund
A Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly at Barkland, one of several that were passing through the island
A young Wheatear
Tonight I went on the Storm Petrel ringing session at the Obs which started at midnight
Tuesday the 6th
The Petrel ringing
A Storm Petrel
A Stormie (above) and a Leach's (below)
In the morning Henry and I went around the south of the Island
Crow Stack
This rock looked like it had a fossil on it
An Oysterplant
An Oysterplant
Kidney Vetch
Later on in the day I went up to the Obs to see if anything had been spotted
The Good Shepherd IV
I spent alot of my afternoon taking pictures of some Puffins outside the Obs
After I'd finished taking pictures of the Puffins I headed up north
The Wick o Furse overlooking Buness
While I was up north I found a flock of 11 Swift flying over the Burn o Wirvie, I also met this couple at Easter Lother Water who had just come of the plane.
Golden Water
A dark morph Arctic Skua, some of the light morph birds have some very strange patterns
An Antler moth which was found at Quoy
Wednesday the 7th
The Stormie ringing tonight was quite exciting
The Stormie ringing tonight was quite exciting
I was outside listening for petrel calls "David come quick we've caught a Swinhoe's!" I quickly ran back into the ringing room repeating "Swinhoe's" about six times, David and Teresa just stood there looking at me and then the rush started to go see it,
I ran over towards the nets along with everyone else and I saw the dark rumped petrel and it was a Swinhoe's! an unringed one! the second for Fair Isle in just one and a half weeks!
And soon people started turning up to see the Swinhoe's including a few from down the Isle.
Dennis Coutts came in specially in hope of seeing the Swinhoe's Petrel be recaptured but he got something even better when a different Swinhoe's appeared.
This bird took his Shetland bird list up to 413 birds! (I think that is nearly as much as the Shetland Bird List!)
The Swinhoe's petrel was the
1st for me (and many others),
2nd for Shetland (the 1st being only 1 and a half weeks before!)
and 6th for Britain
The happy bunch
From Left: Will, Keiran, David, Daniel, Teresa and Rachel
And here is a few blog posts about the 2nd Swinhoe's Petrel
Fair Isle
Fair Isle Bird Observatory: the Warden's diary
In the morning I headed up to the Obs at 9.00 for the trap rounds
A Beautiful Golden-y moth, the 7th of the species for Fair Isle
David with a recently trapped Wheatear
And after the traps David and I did a census of Buness and the Havens
Wheatear
A berry pellet which was most probably made by a Common Gull
Bog Asphodel on Homisdale
A around three in the afternoon I went on a guided walk up to North Light
Easter Lother
The Obs staff out ringing Puffins and Fulmars
Like every night I went up to log but today was a bit different, I wasn't in the door five minutes before there was a call of a Minke Whale heading North-west past Buness, so I went up to North light with Daniel (a JHMF volunteer) and one of the other staff members to rush to see if we could catch the Minke Whale off North Light.
Luckily we were able to see it one or twice before it disappeared off towards Foula (and that was the first time I'd seen a Minke Whale).
Shetland, the hill on the left is Fitful Head and the one on the right is Sumburgh Head
The light of the setting sun on North Light
Thursday the 8th
A male Common Scoter at North Haven along with another male, I saw my first Common Scoters in North Haven last year in October.
A Tystie
take-off
Common Gull on North Haven
Before I went to Haa this morning I popped along Schoolton to see if I could see the male Subalpine Warbler which had been skulking around there.
After spending 15 minutes looking out the Schoolton kitchen window I spotted a bird alight itself on a small tree, it turned out to be the Sub-alp! my second after seeing an "Eastern" bird in May.
A moulting male Subalpine Warbler at Schoolton
Before denner Tommy, Henry and I all went up to the north end of the Isle for a run.
Common Scurvy Grass
Foam in the sea next to North Light
North Light
The foghorn in fog
A Maalie at South Harbour
Lapwings
After spending a while at Haa Liz, Henry and I went to photograph all the wild flowers that we could find in Fair Isle
Tattie flowers
Meadow Buttercup
A Plantain sp (I think)
Sheep's bit
Devil's bit Scabious
Yarrow
Eyebright
Sneezwort
Yellow Rattle gone into seed
Yellow Rattle
Tufted Vetch
Common Chickweed
Dew
Eyebright
Scentless Mayweed
Friday the 9th
Today was Lise Sinclair's Funeral and it was a very sad day on Fair Isle.
Saturday the 10th
David got me to do the census of Buness and the Havens this morning
My counts were: 3 Dunlin, 1 Wheatear, 2 Rock Pipit, 1 Ringed Plover, 2 Pied Wags, 1 Rock Dove and
3 Twite
Midway through the afternoon I was about to head up to Ward Hill but just before I went, I headed over to Schoolton to speak to a birder who was sitting on the front bench outside the house.
Surprisingly the birder turned out to be Dougie Preston who lives in Burravoe in the south of Yell, he was looking for the male Subalpine Warbler that was at Schoolton so I sat down next to him to see if I could spot it.
After 15 minutes there was no sign of it (Dougie had been sitting for an hour looking for it), so we headed round the south and west of the Island looking for birds, while sharing birding experiences along the way.
A Fulmar chick
After an hour of walking we had nearly reached the Double Dyke trap when we met David, Will and the two JHMF volunteers Daniel and Keiran about to go out ringing Bonxies, they asked us if we wanted to come along so we did and I got to ring two chicks and another one pooped on my jeans!
Also I went on the Stormie ringing which was on at 11 instead of being at Midnight
A Stormie
Sunday the 11th
At around three in the afternoon Mairi, Inge, Abby, Henry, Laura, Ellie, Ewen, Eddie and I went to the North Haven beach.
And afterwards at about 4.30 Tommy, Henry and I went on the trap rounds with David.
A Fair Isle Wren
A Golden Plover at Chatham's land which I found on my way to Log.
An immature Puffin, one of two caught in the Obs garden
(they were attracted to the bright moth light)
Before the Petrel ringing started some of us went out to release the two Puffins
Monday the 12th
A double rainbow
While I was waiting to go on the trap rounds with David, Dougie came into the boot room, since we both had a bit of time to kill we went out birding, when we had gone past the Double Dyke I got a text from David that he was about to go on the traps so we turned back and went to the Gully to wait for him.
Just as David was coming over towards us and I spotted a Cuckoo fly into the Gully and I quickly ran to tell David but the Cuckoo flew out of the Gully before we could all move into trap it.
Just incase it came back into the Gully David got me and Dougie to stand a the bank to see if the Cuckoo came back and it did! it flew into the trees at the bottom of the Gully and we all moved into positions, Dougie was at the small waterfall at Finniquoy (Gully), David was standing on the banks where the Gully forks into two, Kerian was standing on the southern bank and David told me to go into the Gully and drive it up towards the trap.
When I was about to start my descent into the Gully the Cuckoo flew silently out the mouth of the Gully towards the sea.
A House Sparrow that I ringed (with help from David)
At 11.45am Dougie and I caught the plane out of Fair Isle and back to Shetland,
Buness and the Havens
St Ninians Isle
The Tronda Bridge
And we finally touched down in Tingwall at around 12 ish
New species= Leach's Petrel, Swinhoe's Storm Petrel!, Cuckoo
The list of species seen in Fair Isle this trip
(not seen in this order)
Fulmar (Maalie)
Starling
House Sparrow
Great Skua (Bonxie)
Wheatear (Steynshakker)
Rock Dove
Cuckoo
Turnstone (Steynpikker)
Dunlin
Gannet (Solan)
Puffin (Tammie Norie)
Shag (Scarf)
Great Black-backed Gull
Herring Gull
Common Gull (Perrie Maa)
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Sedge Warbler
Subalpine Warbler
"Fair Isle Wren"
Green Sandpiper
Eider (Dunter)
Arctic Tern (Tirrick)
Chiffchaff
Willow Warbler
European Storm Petrel (Aalamootie)
Leach's Petrel
Swinhoe's Storm Petrel
Mallard (Stock Deuk)
Redshank
Pied Wagtail
Raven (Corbie)
Hooded Crow
Oystercatcher (Shalder)
Grey Heron (Haegrie)
Meadow Pipit (Hill sporrow)
Rock Pipit (Banks sporrow)
Snipe (Snippick
Swallow
Swift
House Martin
Common Scoter
Twite (Lintie)
Arctic Skua (Skootie aalan)
Black Guillemot (Tystie)
Common Crossbill
Tree Sparrow
Lapwing
Curlew (Whap)
Ringed Plover (Sandiloo)
Golden Plover
Total Species=50
Wild Flower Species=35
Scentless Mayweed
White Clover
Cat's Ear
White Campion
Ragged Robin
Common Scurvy Grass
Dandelion
Spear Thistle
Tormentil
Devil's Bit Scabious
Marsh Ragwort
Heather
Common Bird's Foot Trefoil
Silverweed
Angelica
Creeping Forget-me-not
Eyebright
Thyme
Kidney Vetch
Field Gentium
Tufted Vetch
Butterwort
Yellow Rattle
Sneezwort
Marsh Willowherb
Mouse-ear Chickweed
Oysterplant
Meadow Vetchling
Cleavers
Marsh Cingfoil
Marsh Thistle
Bog Asphodel
Milkwort
Sheep's Bit
Red Campion
Excellent pictures Logan, makes me wish I was back there.
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ReplyDeleteBrillient best pal I think we will have to get you a season ticket for the flights to Fair Isle HaHa!! keep up the good work.