The Weakest List: And the birds vanished ...... Shetland

So, day 4 ...... with the previous 3 days providing AGP, 2 Yellow Browed Warblers, Blyths Reed Warbler, Little Bunting, Hornemanns Arctic Redpoll, Barred Warbler, Surf Scoter and Buff Bellied Pipit, our expectations for today were high, we were not going to chase other peoples birds (false) and we were going to find our own stuff ( also false as it turned out)

Anyway, the day started early, we didn't. Steve went down the patch and saw nothing, we did flush a Song Thrush in the car though, which was a patch tick, the Pied Flycatcher also remains for at least its 4th day.

After a leisurely cooked breakfast of scrambled egg, bacon, sausage, mushrooms and baked beans (can you tell that I am padding this out ?) we drove through the patch, only to stop and talk to some other birders staying in the valley (Craig as it turned out) who told us there was a YELLOW BROWED WARBLER in the garden of the pink house, we twitched it, we pished it, we saw it, we then ambled off to Veensgarth, hoping to find some new waders in the fields that held the AGP and Ruff on Saturday, we quickly refound the AMERICAN GOLDEN PLOVER with a small flock of 24 Golden Plover, which was nice!

This is a picture of the bird on Steves Camera until Steve uploads his photos - but what a bird.

A speculative look (this was the first of about 20 speculative looks that we did today and was by far the best) at the Veensgarth pumping station discovered 5 GREENLAND REDPOLLS, 3 Redwings and a Song Thrush.

A few places that we stopped at between here and Lower Voe (we were not twitching the Spotted Sandpiper because then we would have dipped it) and the highlight was 2 Swallows.

Loch Voe plantation held a Willow Warbler, a Robin and a Goldcrest .... whoopee doo, Steve had a Peregrine over the loch.

There is a Robin in here ..... Only Steve saw it !

Lower voe did not have a Spotted Sandpiper, but did have some Guillemots again

Mark is actually posing here, his lens caps are still on and his eyes are closed.

Lovely Harbour . . . Crap for us seeing Spotted Sandpiper.

A Black Guillemot was on a random sea Loch heading towards Kergord.

The Plantation by Kergord house held, 1 Song Thrush, 5 Brambling, 1 Chaffinch, 1 Pied Flycatcher and 1 YELLOW BROWED WARBLER.

Trees! on Shetland..... there aren't any apparently Ben!

We then thought ..... hmmm shall we look at more random Gardens for Goldcrests or head to a garden with a real bird in, this time we successfully found the right Collafirth, and within minutes had the most briefest flight view of it ever, a nano second, it then didn't show again until we left, 2 Goldfinches were trip ticks and as it turns out the rarest bird of the day that we found.

The journey back was wholly uneventful, 3 Snipe and some Twite in Olaberry