Fetlar 2024. Wind and more wind

Fetlars been extremely windy and  often very wet during my recent stay. In fact the only time I recall so much wind was in the house I shared with three mates in Stretford, whilst at Manchester University in the late 70's early 80's, on a Saturday morning......... Friday nights out on the town would often finish at the infamous Plaza Cafe run by the indomitable Charlie. This curry house was open until the early hours of the morning and served three kinds of curry sauce - mild, hot and suicide. Formica topped tables, plastic beer glasses with water in and plates full of popadoms. The safest option was the chicken curry and this used to arrive on a pile of rice with the curry sauce of your choice in a separate jug.  It was rumoured that some zoology students had taken some bones back to the labs and analysed them  and they weren't what they expected ....put it this way. You never saw any cats around the Plaza!  The few people I knew who tried the suicide sauce left on heir hands and knees and claimed they couldn't taste anything for weeks. The local police used to park up outside just to laugh at the students leaving worse for wear in the early hours of the morning. I did know an Iraqi PhD student called Jamal who ordered the suicide sauce. Drank it with a spoon and said to Charlie, 'I've finished my soup can I have the main course please........' The look on Charlies face was priceless and Jamal was a legend in the Williamson Building from then on.

Plaze cafe menu courtesy of the internet!

Anyway,  I  digress. Fetlar has been extremely windy! Its made birding very hard and its been a slog to try and find anything. My best finds so far have been Moorhen (!), Common Rosefinch and adult Glaucous Gull. As soon as a small bird is found its gone with the wind! Like many other birders I'm lamenting the number of commoner migrants. I've not see n a Whitethroat or Lesser Whitethroat since arriving and only one Garden Warbler. Small number of Goldcrests and winter thrushes have been passing through including my first Fieldfare of the autumn. Wildfowl is arriving in small numbers and the best of these have been a female Scup found by Mark, on Papil Water,  before  I arrived and a Long-tailed Duck I found on Funzi Loch.

Female type Scaup

Long-tailed Duck

Some of the days have been been beautifully sunny but still windy! Summers hanging on in sheltered areas with Sheeps Bit Scabious and Ragged Robin flowering in the mires.

Ragged Robin

Sheeps Bit Scabious

Full English in a pie! 

Tunnocks Tea Cakes - a highlight of my annual trips to the northern isles

One of the undoubted highlights of the week has been seeing Comet A3 (Tsuchinshan-Atlas )  as the clouds miraculously cleared for an hour or so on Monday night. This comet was last seen from earth in Neanderthal times and I mulled over the fact that I might be the first person ever to have seen it on Fetlar. With only 50 or so inhabitants its quite likely. I don't think Fetlar was inhabited that long ago and was first inhabited in the Bronze Age.  What a thought! 

Thermal imaging has been a recent development in birding and mine has proved its worth this week. Many birds are hunkered down out the wind but the thermal has picked up a heat signature and allowed me to pick up birds otherwise invisible when just using binoculars.  A case in point is this newly arrived Woodcock found in the plantation up Feal Burn - an area I've been checking 2-3 times daily. It was sitting tight and without the thermal I'd have missed it.

Using the thermal to check for heat signatures in thick vegetation

Woodcock found using the thermal 

I watched 4 Redwing drop into the tops of some pine trees in the plantation. I could see them through the thermal but could not pick them out in the binoculars!

My accommodation is right by the sea, at Houbie, so there's always something to look at from the windows even when its to wet to go out.  The strong southerly winds blew this adult winter plumaged Kittiwake into the bay and I braved the weather to get a couple of photographs as it fed close to shore occasionally plunge diving after some small morsel in the surf.

Greylag Geese are feature of autumns / winters on Shetland. These originate from Iceland and most are genuinely wild birds compared to the feral birds we see in Cheshire. Large numbers winter on Fetlar and I make a point of checking them all  as they can bea carrier species for  something more unusual such as last weeks Barnacle Goose or Pinkfeet.

Although its been hard going I keep telling myself I've got two more days here before starting the long journey home. Tomorrow's another day and it only takes one good bird.............