DOTTEREL and that's about it -21/9/2021

I was fairly optimistic that yesterday was a blip and today was going to be a return to seeing lots of birds. However it was a bit of a no-show this day, which is how the rest of my tour of the islands of Shetland would pan out. For what has been a fairly quiet year for me bird wise, with the lockdown closing off the first quarter, I had plenty of birds to see to get back on track, and I thought this holiday would help. I mean there's nothing like going to Shetland, to really get to see some birds. But it just wasn't the case, and I was barely making any year ticks on this holiday (year ticks, in case you don't know, are the bird sightings for the year) let alone lifers.

As the title of the post makes obvious, the only bird of note today was a DOTTEREL. Like all the best sightings it was completely unplanned. Whilst searching through a flock of GOLDEN PLOVER in Stenness, our leader came across a slightly smaller bird in the flock. 'DOTTEREL!' came the shout, and everyone turned to scout through the plovers. It took a bit of searching but when I found it the bird became obvious and provided a good view of what can be hard bird to get close to. The dotterel was slightly smaller than the goldens, with a white eye stripe and an all brown plumage. The dotterel is a type of plover that nests in the highlands of Scotland, and for this species the roles of the sexes are reversed, with males looking after the young, and the females having the brighter plumage for a change. 

GOLDEN PLOVER, it was among a flock of these birds that I got the sighting of the DOTTEREL

You sometimes get DOTTERELS wandering through East Anglia on passage, but for Shetland this was the rarest bird we would see for the islands on the entire holiday. GOLDEN PLOVERS were fairly common, flocking on areas of short grassland throughout the islands, we would see them most days, nice birds, their big black eyes make them seem so sweet and innocent.

A good place we went to was Eshaness, but it was more for a photographic opportunity providing some stunning cliffs battered by the sea with massive waves to take pictures of. Winds were strong and not much was seen except a couple of ROCK PIPTS, common enough birds of the rocky coasts of Shetland. Most of the photos in this post was taken there. Its sort of the typical coast habitat of extreme cliffs, with tightly grazed grassland above. I think we went here so the leaders could come up with something for us to do today.

Scatness was a medium sized lowland loch where we pinned the hopes of seeing some birds, waterfowl this time. We visited in the afternoon, and parked on the top of a hill, looking down with good views of the loch below, amongst moorland. There was a good assortment here for Shetland, because amongst the WHOOPERS and WIGEON, two PINTAIL were about, and some SHOVELLERS, which seem to be rare in Shetland. Two PALE BELLIED BRENT GEESE flew in to join the show, a fairly rare bird on Shetland, in Suffolk we get the dark bellied kind, so they were a bit exotic for me.

A youngish HERRING GULL

Days on which not much happens are so much easier to write up, as I have less to type, and don't have to worry about leaving things out. But on the other side it was becoming obvious that the holiday was petering out under the lack of birds and my first visit to Shetland was turning into a dud, not really what I wanted on visiting these haloed isles. I know that on the flip side I was visiting this place for the first time, where everything was new to me, I was meeting new people, and having large hearty meals in the evening, so I can't really complain. There are two sides to everything.