Well yet again it's been a long time since my last post and it's certainly not that I've lost interest. I have been finding it difficult to find the time and sit and spend several hours going through what we've been doing and what's been seen around here. So, what I'll have to do this time is just a brief run-down of the last month with pictures rather than an extended story which some may find even a tad boring.

  The day after I arrived home (26th April) I traveled with Sula down to Lerwick where she was singing at the Shetland Music Festival. She sang solo and also several duets with a couple of her friends. They all did well, getting silver 'merits' for the duets and Sula getting a gold for her solo performance. The day after, I started work again on the house which is why there's not been much blog activity recently.

  On the 5th May, my first Arctic Tern of the year returned to the shore at Ordaal and was a really welcome sight and gave the feeling that spring had finally returned........

  For a few days after the 7th, we had up to four Tree Sparrows in the garden daily - which made a nice change to the ever present House Sparrows......

Tree Sparrow

  A few days later I had a trip to Lerwick and on my return home, went and saw the pair of Garganey which had been on the pool near the school.............

Male Garganey

  On the scarcer side of things, during May there were a number of Red-backed Shrikes around, including this lovely male I saw over at Haroldswick for a few days........

Male Red-backed Shrike

  Below are a few  pictures of some other migrants that past through Unst during May and also some residents......

 Common Sandpiper at Skaw

 Cuckoo at Valyie

 Grey-headed Wagtail at Skaw

 Marsh Warbler at Skaw

 Roosting Blackcaps in Baltasound

Wood Sandpiper at Inner Skaw

Female Red-backed Shrike at Norwick

  Apart from working on the house - inside and out - I have done 3 day trips guiding for Brydon,
the first being a joint one taking a group of BP workers on a 'team building' walk on Hermaness (in not so nice weather), the second was an individual from Qatar and the third was a group of 4 as Brydon was unwell so I stood in at (very) short notice.

  Also around the middle of May, a Common Crane turned up at Haroldswick. It soon became apparent that the bird had injured itself (possibly on wires) as it seemed to be unable to fly - its left wing hung downwards. Despite this, the bird seemed to be thriving, walking all over the north side of Setters Hill. Last week the bird disappeared for a couple of days and then reappeared in Baltasound - several miles away.........

Common Crane and Lapwing at Haroldswick

  Towards the end of May, we all went over to Fetlar for the night to see a folk group called Vamm fronted by Shetland fiddler Catriona Macdonald. All I can say is that it was a cracking evening. On the way over in the afternoon, the ferry passed close-by to a lovely summer plumaged Great Northern Diver. For some reason there has been quite a few close inshore this year - Mike P had over 80 at Muness earlier on in the Spring.......

Great Northern Diver

  Probably the best Spring migrant of the year so far has been a cracking male Woodchat Shrike that Mike and Margaret Pennington found not far from 'Bobby's Bus Stop' . It was a lovely bird and one that quite a few people got to see - despite the fact it didn't stay for long. I even got it on the 'garden list (119) which was a bit extreme as I put a telescope adapter on my 500 + 2x converter which made it a 100x magnification telescope - extreme to say the least !.....

 Woodchat Shrike (not taken from the garden!)

  At the end of May I had a visit from my friend Graham Goddard who stayed for a week. Graham is a cracking photographer and seeing the photographs on his website confirms this. Unfortunately I didn't have much time out with him this time as I was pretty busy with one thing and another but we did have a very enjoyable day on Hermaness.

  I'd been shown the start of the cliff path down to one of the Gannet colony's a while back but had never gone down there. One reason was timing and the other was I didn't want to tackle it for the first time on my own. So with a bit of encouragement from Graham, I descended down and to be quite honest, I've done a lot more scary routes years ago in the mountains of The Lakes and also Scotland. However, for the reason of safety of others, I'm not going to either describe the route down, or show any pictures - just the birds and the view taken on the 1st visit and another visit last week on my own........

       Robbie