Of Birds & Cake the Blog of Paul: Holiday Day 3: Arrival and a cracking start!

You may remember I was last seen heading for my sleeping pod on board the good ship MV Hrossey as we headed towards Shetland, To be honest it would have been a lot easy to sleep in the pod, if they turned the poxy TV off with it's endless repetition of the infomercial about the joys of Northlink Ferries grrrr😡!! Not much sleep attained not helped by the increased swell, though Margie reckoned it rocked her to sleep😏, TBH I'm glad it wasn't as windy as it has been in the last couple of days!! I did however get to see the sunrise though the picture from the window is not up to much!

Sunrise from the boat

Due to dozing, miscalculating what time we would arrive and taking too long on the rather tasty onboard breakfast, I got very little time to Seawatch from the boat, Though I did manage a few Puffins, Auks, and Fulmars on the run in over the extremely calm Sea.

Black Guillemot

Lerwick

Razorbill

Shag

Fulmar

Guillemot

Guillemots

We had arrived, our accommodation wouldn't be available until later in the day, so with six hours to kill and the weather lovely, the thought of Puffins in glorious sunshine was to much to resist and we decided a run down to Sumburgh Head would be in order! The journey was unremarkable I stopped at a couple of viewpoints on route for a scan over the sea, Great Northern Divers all over the place as well as plenty of Auks and a couple of Seals.

Margie's hastily grabbed picture of the Sign!!

We arrived in goodtime, just a couple of cars in the carpark, things started well, but frustratingly with a Bonxie right over our heads with the camera still in the car!!😢

Things soon improved, Fulmars especially showing well, but great views of Guillemots and Razorbills, the Scenery was pretty spectacular as well!

Guillemots, lots of em about!

Fulmar

Rabbit

Wheatear plenty of these about

Meadow Pipit were a lot of these and Rock Pipits as well

Rock Pipit

Great Black-backed Gull

Starling

Bonxie obviously one flew over no camera, this was the best view I ended up with😢

Fulmars greeting each other

Razorbill

Shetland Wren, I believe is an endemic subspecies of Wren, song was certainly different and it hardly cocked it's tail at all!

Meadow Pipit

Some of Margie's pics below. more scenery based.

Sumburgh Lighthouse

Dedication

A bit of Sperm Whale bone

Closest we've come to an Orca so far, note me rocking the one sock out look!

Foghorn not needed today

So what about the Puffins? Well we saw plenty flying about, but they were few and far between near their burrows, luckily I had sharp eyed Margie who spotted a couple as they popped out!! I got a few shots😀

Got to love a Puffin!!It's the law!!💓

They are cute but are they Bunny through the grass cute?

I know I'm going soft!

Or shy Fulmar Cute

Ok I'll stop now!

Another bird I wanted to have good views of this holiday were Twite, didn't really expect them today but there were several around the lighthouse and a couple posed well!

Twite

So chuffed with them and with the café open celebrated with a nice piece of Apricot and Almond cake, which was very tasty indeed.

Yum!

Suitably refreshed we continued with more sightings of all the good stuff!!

Rock Dove

Razorbill

Wheatear

Fulmar

Shetland Wren

Yes I know, Margie thinks I'm obsessed with em!!

More from Margie

So we headed down the hill back towards the car, another Puffin showed well!

Nice to see a whole one!!!

We headed down the hill back towards the car, was just bemoaning my luck with another Bonxie that went through exactly where I'd been 10 minutes before,when I picked up a Skua coming up the cliff ahead of me bins on it , a lovely Pale Phase Arctic Skua heading towards us, Whoop!! Margie soon had it in her bins as well, as I went into raptures about the stunning bird when Margie asked "why is it called a Pale Phase?!" "Er duh the bright white belly to start with!!" Margie replied "well the bellies dark brown!!" taking my eyes off the viewfinder, I look up, two bird Scenario!!! So focused was I, that the second bird, a lovely Dark Phase Arctic had gone unnoticed!! Bonus!!!

A few pics below!!!

So 20+ pics may not seem to be a few but relative to how many I took trust me it is!!!😁

What a couple of birds!!! An amazing encounter, my best ever views of this species, though didn't really do the Dark Phase justice!

We headed back north, our apartment was ready, Margie managed a picture of a Hooded Crow in a brief stop at a layby!

Hooded Crow by Margie!!

So once settled in we decided to have a little wander around Lerwick despite being pretty knackered by now, luckily I took the camera as there was a lovely Black Guillemot fishing in the harbour!