Hint of Autumn

With flocks of birds all over and with a few migrants it is beginning to feel a bit like autumn. Spring migration was a let down for most people and many local birders turned to looking at flowers as a back up, so everyone is looking forward to a magic autumn.

In the last few days Red Kite, Reed Warbler, Little Stint, Curlew Sandpiper and Green Sandpiper have been seen.  A  few years ago we had an influx of Crossbill at this time of year and it would be good to see some again.

We headed over to Sandness on Saturday in glorious weather. We parked next to the beach which enabled us to view the waders about 1/2 way along. Once located we headed out and got fairly close to them:

                                                                                                   Juvenile  Ringed Plover

Knot (2) Sanderling (3) Ringed Plover (32) Turnstone (22) Oystercatcher (78) Curlew (34) Dunlin(6)

                                                                                                                 Knot

also Arctic Tern (100) Arctic Skua (4) Gt Skua (2) Cormorant (4) Wheatear (8) Pied Wag (2 pairs with 4 +3 young) Rock Pipit, Wren, Meadow Pipit, Skylark, House Sparrow, Starling, Blackbird, Eider, Red breasted merganser, Common, GTBB, Herring gull, Hoddie, Raven, Whooper Swan

A lot of action as Arctic Skuas chased the Arctic Terns

One of the Arctic Skuas had a nice grey colour while the others showed a lot of white with only one dark phased bird.

                                                                                                        Arctic Skua

Shetland has become a great place to see Whales with many Killer Whale sightings, also Minke Whales , White sided and Risso dolphins and Porpoise numbers seem to be building in Mousa sound. On Friday I watched a pod of 8 in the morning and they were still in the same area 5 hours later.

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