Robbie's Northern Exposures: It's been a long time....

I can't believe it's been a month since my last blog post, sorry about that.

I'll make this post a fairly short one - mainly because I've been very busy at home and haven't been out and about too much .....aaahh, poor me :)

So what has happened during the last month ? While Catriona was away in Tonga, the girls had a couple of days off school (short holiday) so we headed to Lerwick for the day. This was partly to get some building materials but also to go and have a second look for the Pine Grosbeak that had been at Collafirth for quite a while. PGs are a rare visitor to Britain with only just over a dozen records. Due to its rarity status, this bird drew twitchers from far and wide, many flying up just for the weekend - some costs I saw were around £600 - it would be cheaper to go to northern Europe to see one. My first attempt to look for it failed due to it going in to hiding just half an hour before I got there and despite spending several hours searching, it remained elusive. Thankfully, the second attempt was more successful and the girls and I saw it for a few minutes (although quite high in the conifers) before it flew off. Other folk, on other occasions, were much luckier than us, getting very close views in bright sunshine, whereas we had a dull overcast day, hey ho suppose it was only a bird.....

Pine Grosbeak

At the end of February, I was outside doing some wall repairs when I heard a number of Hoodies mobbing something just to the east of the house. Thinking it might be the Sea Eagle (it had been seen again down on Mainland) I grabbed the bins and searched the sky to the east. I soon found the source of the noise, three Hoodies mobbing a buzzard quite high up. I first assumed it was a Rough-leg' (I've seen more of them than Common Buzzards here - come to think about it, I'd only seen one Common B) but later on enlarging the image on the pc, I saw it was indeed and Common Buzzard - 116 for the garden list.......

Common Buzzard and Hooded Crow

The 2nd March was the second of the Unst Up Helly Ah's and this was up at Norwick. Thankfully the weather for this one was almost perfect, not much wind, no rain and not too cold. The procession started with the squads coming down the hillside by way of the 'broken road' (the old, now closed road to Skaw). It's always a lovely sight with the flaming torches lighting up the hillside and foreshore, but not an easy one to photograph without using a ridiculously high ISO setting on the camera which then introduces too much digital noise to the pictures. Below are a few pics from the event....

Weather wise, the last month has been pretty variable. As usual its been a mixture of the occasional nice still day (6 or 8 degrees, coat off weather), wet and wild days and also a few cold days. At the beginning of this last week, we had a few snow flurries and had a forecast of a covering of snow for Wednesday. Waking early on Wednesday morning around 5.45am, I looked out and saw the hills to the west were white. Even though I was due to go to work later, I decided to head for Hermaness. By 7.45am I was at the end of the boardwalk at the cliffs - what a great place in winter! There wasn't too much wind, the light wasn't bad and out at sea were quite a few snow showers moving through. My first encounter was with one of the number of feral cats that occur up there and I don't know who was more surprised me or it......

I also came a cross a small flock of Skylarks that were trying to find food on the snow covered clifftop - quite often in the places where the sheep had been lying during the night............

Along at the nesting cliffs, there were quite a few Gannets but by far the greater number were either sitting down on the water or soaring around and around offshore like a giant gannet 'tornado'.......

These are views of Hermaness that most visitors to the reserve never get to see, it's a truly magical place at any time of the year - even more so with a covering of snow in late winter....