Our trip to Fair Isle for a weeks birding and rarity hunting started badly. Parking my car at Jasons place we got a taxi into the airport and checked in without any problems. We soon found our flight from Manchester to Aberdeen was oven an hour late which meant we were going to miss the connection from Aberdeen to Sumburgh. That in turn meant we were going to have an overnight stay in Aberdeen courtesy of Loganair. However, we soon discovered the outgoing flight from Sumburgh to Aberdeen was late which meant its return would also be delayed! We had a word wit hthe stewardess when we eventually boarded our Manchester flight and she confirmed the Sumburgh flight would wait for us as there were four passengers in the same predicament. Time to relax and enjoy a Tunnoocks caramel bar!
Sure enough the Sumburgh flight was waiting for us and we soon boarded and were on our way. By now it was almost 2 hours later and it was already dark when we arrived at Sumburgh and picked up the hire car. We were due to fly onto Fair Isle from Tingwall at 10 am the following morning but a message from Deryk Shaw had us doubting this would happen as apparently the plane had gone 'tech'. No problem, they've got a spare plane.....
The next morning we turned up at Tingwall where it was confirmed the plane had a mechanical failure. Unbelievably we found out the spare plane was in Leeds for a major service! It was confirmed there was no flights that day and possibly not for a few days as they were having to fly an engineer up from........Leeds.......Arse.
A few quick messages and Becca Nason & Phil Harris kindly sorted a room for us in their superb B & B in Lerwick. The next call was to Star to extend the hire car for a few days. Deciding to head back to Tesco's to stock up on supplies, it would have been rude not to call in and see the juvenile Citrine Wagtail that was hanging out with Pied Wagtails. After a brief wait we picked it up on call as it flew in.
A great little bird and after watching it for about an hour we decided to do some birding further north checking Lunna & Voxter. The best bird we found was a Yellow-browed Warbler yet a week or so later these sites held a Veery and Olive - backed Pipit respectively.
Heading back to Ortolan House (see
here ) we were met by Becca & Phil who kindly invited to join them for an 'houres deuve' of freshly caught Langoustine before we went for our main meal of an Indian!
Following breakfast the next morning we said our goodbyes to our hosts and headed off to do some more birding before heading to Tingwall for our flight to Fair Isle. Phone reception on Shetland Mainland is patchy and when we decided to call in at Tingwall airport on the way back to Lerwick we found Alan had been trying to contact Jason. Apparently an engineer had made it up from Leeds with the required spare part of the plane and we were flying the next day at 12.30! We weren't so confident but the engineer was tasked with working all night if necessary to get the plane airworthy. The issue was a problem with the brakes and in particular a small sensor.
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