A rock of red sandstone sitting at the top of Britain, Fair Isle has been the setting for some of the most exhilarating discoveries and moments of migration in our hobby's history. Its tapestry has touched all the most interesting birders I know. My last 15 years are dotted with their tales – of Pacific storm petrels ensconced in mistnets, inlets foaming with hunting Orcas, afternoon arrivals from the east and quintessentially Fair Isle words – think 'Pechora', 'lancy' and 'rubythroat'.
Places like this are so heavy in mythic resonance it can be hard to identify where hyperbole ends and reality begins, and with every passing pub session engrossed in another's Northern Isles yarns, my own brand of folklore FOMO had formed. There was simply nowhere else I needed to experience more.
Now when I wake, it is a Shetland sun I see, in effect long before 5 am. Through the window Sheep Rock looms permanent on the horizon, a white smear of gannets on its south-east bluff. My notebook is warped and cracked from use. Fair Isle has been the stage for probably the most memorable month in my birding life.
Spring migrants
Somewhere over Europe, a Common Redstart powers north on a south-easterly wind, the memory of an African winter far behind it. Primeval urges in its brain drive it onwards, to a destination it will recall on impulse alone. Millions like it are making that same journey across the continent, chasing longer days in Scandinavia's forests. It's a gruelling voyage and the sea below offers little respite – our redstart must fly on.
That same prevailing current in early May delivered blistering birding as the flyway of our redstart drifted on a collision course with Fair Isle. Warblers, chats, flycatchers, shrikes and Wrynecks made landfall, day after day, week after week. No sooner had one wave of arrivals tailed off, it seemed like another would arrive, each swell subtly different in its species migrant make-up.
A decent May for Wryneck included three individuals around the observatory on 2nd (Alex Penn).
Birders lucky enough to have experienced 'falls' before will recognise the fickle joy that comes with them; the urge to tally numbers, scour for rarities, arrange ground coverage, photograph, sketch, write … these all compete in a familiar adrenaline rush. Combine the above with a compulsion to wring every drop out of the birdable light, and it is a happy frazzled husk of a birder which finally beds down that night, attempting to relive the day through a breakdown of moments.
Thursday 2 May 2024
I scrunched the toecaps of my boots forward another inch, hanging them off the cliff edge under a cushion of thrift. I was at the north corner of Gunnawark, a deep scoop in the sandstone on Fair Isle's west coast. The sun was on my face and the cavern below me was lifting with that afternoon's arrival of migrants.
A warm breeze was whisking birds against the sheer sides of the geo in updrafts; warblers and flycatchers lazily pursuing each other in spirals like leaves in eddies of wind. A sallying Willow Warbler would be replaced by a Common Redstart, to be chased off by a Blackcap seconds later. The rock face shivered with twitching Pied Flycatchers. They flushed in a synchronised swoop at the arrival of a silver-winged Ring Ouzel. Short, liquid calls bounced off the geo's walls. This was birding at its most visceral and uplifting.
Incongruous encounters with migrant passerines, such as this Wood Warbler, were a feature of May for Jonnie (Jonnie Fisk).
It was all I could take to not topple off the clifftop in order to peer further below, where more passerines flicked in and out of view. Then, a flash of brilliant white commanded attention away from this death wish. I raised my bins. Framed in a wedge of sunlight falling on shadowed cliffs, was the king of Ficedulas.
A son of Europe's eastern woodlands, surveying his subjects swirling below in what was now my favourite spot on the isle. A male Collared Flycatcher, forever burned on the inside of my eyelids!
This fetching male Collared Flycatcher was a prize find for Jonnie (Jonnie Fisk).
Wednesday 22 May 2024
Twenty days after the vanguard of our south-easterly fall, I was once again heading north to fulfil my census after a morning guiding cruise passengers. Buoyed on by the arrival of more drift migrants, a quick chat with fellow assistant warden Luke at Setter croft was supplemented by two Icterine Warblers frolicking in the garden. I pressed on …
As soon as I reached the north-west cliffs, another 'icky' sprung out the heather. A few metres later, so did another. The situation shortly became surreal as I worked my route. Banana-yellow 'hippos' materialised in pairs, tacking onto sallying groups of Spotted Flycatchers, hopping above Puffins and, most fantastically, scaling the Ward Hill mast with Lesser Whitethroats!
Their presence not only upstaged the Red-backed Shrikes that accompanied them in equal number, but also a surprise spring Barred Warbler too, thrashing about near the observatory as I reconvened with my colleagues, some seven hours and fifteen Icterine Warblers later. There had never been a day like it for that species in Fair Isle history.
Late in the month, an incredible fall of Icterine Warblers saw record numbers of the species on the island (Jonnie Fisk).
Wednesday 29 May 2024
Warden Alex Penn headed to where I was lounging, shoes off, under a blue sky at Buness. Further scrutiny revealed he brandished an ice-cream – result! We chewed the fat (and a Magnum) for a while, as I had also done hours earlier to islander and former Fair Isle Bird observatory warden David Parnaby, who felt it was about time for a classic Fair Isle moment. Rare larks and Dronger, at the island's far north-west, were mentioned. Perhaps a job for another day, another census …
As if to shatter any creeping complacency, a clarion call came from the island's bush telegraph. Two words set our synapses ablaze. Marmora's Warbler. Just minutes later, the island's birders were arranged radially around a tumbledown sheep cru, watching this tiny cock-tailed tyke bouncing from from the silverweed to the lichen-covered stone.
David's premonition of a "classic Fair Isle moment" had materialised in front of him, and we sat smiling, any pressing tasks forgotten, with a north-easterly wind on our necks, studying this species which makes the nuttiest long-range movements. It was the daftest, most fitting way to round off a month of drifty, Scandinavian energy: a slate blue Curruca hatched in the maquis shrublands of the Mediterranean!
The news of a Red-footed Falcon riding the Northlink as it sailed by us, unknown, did nothing to detract from the day. Perfectly, absurdly Fair Isle: a place where anything goes.
The bird of the month was this male Marmora's Warbler, found by former Fair Isle Bird Observatory warden David Parnaby (Steve Arlow).
Rare birds in Shetland
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