Today was one of those days on Shetland, pretty ordinary seen a few good bits and pieces but nothing extraordinary, when one word can transform everything!! Orca!!
The day had started slowly, was cloudy, dull but dry we headed north to see what we could find, a few bits and bobs, Mergansers and Eiders on a loch, Black Guillemot, Red-throated Diver and more Mergs on another Loch, the usual Curlew, Oystercatchers and vocal Skylarks on the moorland
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| Red-breasted Merganser |
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| Eider |
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| Curlew flying about |
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| Curlew standing about |
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| Black Guillemot, shame about the light |
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| Red-throated Diver |
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| Came nice and close but stubbornly refused to show it's red throat! |
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| Flyover Merganser |
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| Canada Goose seen distantly on a Loch, not sure how rare they are in Shetland, only one we saw the whole trip!! |
We stopped for lunch at the Braewick Café where I waited for the "Ultimate Burger" to be honest I was sceptical that the "Ultimate Burger" would be found in a small café on Shetland but to be fair when it arrived it was pretty impressive with an egg in it and everything!! Had my first Magnum of the year for pud as well!!
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| "Ultimate Burger" was tasty !! |
As we were in the area we decided to visit Eshaness Lighthouse again basically in the faint hope of a Pom Skua, we arrived in good time, a few Puffins on the cliffs Fulmars flying about, Bonxies and Gannets flying through, all the good stuff, but no Pom😢
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| Gannets |
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| Whirlpooly bit of sea |
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| Fulmar |
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| Puffin |
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| Bonxie |
We headed down to the loch, where a couple of Red-throated Divers were hanging about, we sat down on the grass to have a rest, the birds drifted nearer and then started a bizarre display or possibly were washing, it could be described as what my mum used to call, when me and my brother were playing up, "a funny half-hour" it was extraordinary with the birds taking it in turns to thrash about in the water, often ending up completely upside down, was mental!!😲
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| And relax |
An astonishing twenty minutes!! We headed back up to the cliffs, not much happening a few Kittiwakes past, the sea looked like a silver mirror!
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| Kittiwakes |
At this point a minibus turned up with a group of birders, think was one of the pro tour groups, anyway the guy leading it, put his scope up had a quick scan and announced "Orca!!" Well at this point I was all ears!!😃 cheekily following the directions he was giving the group and immediately finding the Orcas, for there were two, must say they were distant but looked magnificent in the bins, even at that range the sense of power they have was palpable! I then attempted to get pics, which was quite difficult as the buggers kept disappearing under the water and with no point of reference was difficult to get em in the viewfinder at all, managed a few record shots first pic is uncropped to give a sense of the distance involved!
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Uncropped shot no that is not a spot on your screen it is the magnificent masters of the deep!
Honest Guv!😁 |
Some cropped shots below
A very exciting 20 minutes or so trying to keep track of them, with varying amounts of success, we only saw two, but think others saw at least another one or maybe two knocking around!! Eventually when it became clear they weren't coming back and fearing we wouldn't top that we headed back to base!!
The more observant of you may have noticed a distinct lack of pics from Margie in todays post this could be because she didn't take any or possibly though very unlikely that some twonk has either deleted them or downloaded them to a different folder and now can't find them although I think that is most unlikely😰😏
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