We have just come back from two weeks in Shetland, this is our sixth or seventh visit since our honeymoon there 35 years ago! A fabulous trip as ever. We stayed again in The Taing at Reawick with the sea literally at the bottom of the garden…
So the garden list was quite impressive…
We also had a fantastic trip out to see the gannetry at Noss...
with spectacularly close birds diving within inches of the
boat
There is always a sense of anticipation here as birds can turn up anywhere, so I had Greenish Warbler in a cattle feeder…
Barred Warbler on an old tyre dump…
And Wood Warbler on a garden fence…
But the rarest bird was the long-staying Hudsonian Godwit.
It was very poor light the day I saw it so not great pictures but it was rather
nostalgic as this species was the first real rarity I ever saw (more than 40
years ago!)…
Some nice plants too with Bog and Frog Orchid, roadside Field Gentians, Oysterplant but the star being Edmonston’s Chickweed…
We were very late for this species but managed to find a
single plant in bloom, by definition this would be the only one in flower on
the planet as its world distribution is restricted to the tiny Keen of Hamar
reserve on Unst.
Mammals too with good views of Otter and Mountain Hare. The
one disappointment was cetaceans, it has been a really poor summer for them in
Shetland, nevertheless we had views of Risso’s dolphin and Harbour Porpoise and
some of the family saw a pod of Orca on the ferry back to Aberdeen (it didn’t
include me as I had just gone to have my tea in the restaurant!)
Another memorable experience was seeing the Mareel, this word comes from the old Norse for ‘fiery sea’ and is a marine phosphorescence. Swimming (or in my case paddling!) in the nighttime sea was like stirring up a miniature firework display, magical!
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