Day 15 19/05/2022: The disappearing Eagle !!!

Having stayed up to all hours the night before for the Mousa Boat trip, we had a late start today, with nothing planned we decided to go and look for a Red-backed Shrike that had been reported the day before, didn't expect to get it but was in an area we hadn't been to before. so we followed the road until it ended at Muckle Roe, no sign of the Shrike but some cracking scenery, we found a nice beach we thought we would explore, unfortunately when we got down there it was caked in Terns and we could see no way on without disturbing them so we turned back to the car!!

Arctic Tern

Terns on the Beach

Seal just offshore

Log on the beach by Margie

Scenery by Margie

So what to do, with little energy we decided to aim for Sandness to try for another Otter fix, with a view to stopping on the way if we saw something good, not my fault if the first thing we saw was the Cake Fridge place!!😂 We obviously bought some goodies then relocated to the Burn of Lunket  which we had spotted nearby, we had a pleasant enough walk up to the waterfall, beautiful scenery as you can tell by Margie's pics below, but the area seemed largely birdless, except for the occasional  Meadow Pipit and the odd flyover Raven, I scoured the area looking for Mountain Hares but without success!!

Lovely place, we headed off, I bravely resisted going back into the Cake Fridge, next stop was a woodland!! Yes in Shetland!! Michaels Wood near Aith, quite a pleasant walk around enlivened by hearing and seeing Lesser Redpolls in display flight!!

Lesser Redpoll

We continued on to Sandness the scenery really is beautiful, very pleasant drive, no sign of any Otters but lots of Waders and a few Gulls on the beach mostly in breeding plumage.

Common Gull & Black-headed Gull

Turnstone

Dunlin

Ringed Plover

Common Gull

Sanderling

Purple Sandpiper

Sanderling

I had a wander up the road, some Twite on the verge and some Fish in the stream!

Twite

Back on the beach a Redshank had joined the Throng!

Redshank

Turnstone

Purple Sand and Turnstones on the rocks

Common Gull

Some of the Dunlins got a bit feisty

Ringed Plover, there were two displaying to each other

Bonxie flying over

Another feisty Dunlin

Ringed Plover

With the Otter stubbornly not appearing we called it a day and headed back to base, just past the Bridge of Walls just before the A971 becomes two way rather than single track ahead of us I spotted a large bird being mobbed by several Gulls and a Raven, the unmistakable shape (even by me!) of a White-tailed Eagle, unfortunately I had another car right up me tailpipe so couldn't stop, eventually got to a passing place and pulled over, but the bird had disappeared over the ridge adjacent to the road, we waited a while in the hope the bird would reappear but no luck, we drove on to a nice viewpoint where we could look over the general area where the bird had gone, but to no avail!! Defeated we headed back to base, another enjoyable day!!!