Slow going in southerlies and sunshine

Lovely day today, but not setting the world on fire in terms of birds!

We headed north from Lerwick to check out a few patches around the Vidlin area. Lunna and Swining both had single Yellow-browed Warblers, and a redpoll of some flavour flew south calling, while at Vidlin yet another Merlin perched up in front of us briefly – we’ve seen at least one of these daily so far.

Down at Kergord, we found at least four more Yellow-broweds, and a noisy Pied Flycatcher at Upper Kergord. Other less scarce birds making it onto the trip list for the first time included 21 Woodpigeon, 3 Chaffinch, 2 Siskin and a Song Thrush! Exciting times…

Jono joins us tomorrow, having filthily twitched a certain large North American bird near Aberdeen en route. I guess you’ve heard of a swear box… well, we’ve decided we’re going to have a ‘crane box’, so he has to fork out a pound each every time he mentions it.

In the absence of any bird photos of note, here’s some nice scenery from Lunna and Vidlin. Note the general lack of passerine migrant habitat!