Going For A Song

Tuesday 15th May 2018

Going For A Song
Last night I WhatsApp'ed my birding mates... Test week. I am ****ed if something turns up this week.

To translate for those that don't know me outside of smallholding, I am a part-time primary school teacher. Part of my job is to prepare and support Year 6 children for their tests, for the poor things have a series of impossible hoops to jump through. It is a result of endless educational 'improvements' so that successive governments can either lambast teachers for not doing their jobs properly or boast about how good they are since they have successfully taken the child out of Britain's children.

The second part of my message refers to my habit of dropping absolutely everything to head off to far-flung parts of Britain to see rare birds, especially ones I've not seen before in this country. This happens more and more infrequently as the list of birds 'needed' goes down.

And so to Tuesday morning. I was not required at school today, but Wednesday and Thursday would be 100% obligatory attendance. It was a slow start to the day. Even the incessant hungry bleating of the two bottle-fed lambs failed to stir me from my slumber and it was only just before 9 that I finally woke up. This, I hasten to add, is not usual.
I checked my phone to see what the day had already brought and there it was.

SONG SPARROW. 7:49.. FAIR ISLE. TRAPPED AND RINGED IN PLANTATION.

I need that.
In case you don't know, Fair Isle is essentially a huge inhabited rock which juts up above the sea in between the Orkney Isles and the Shetland Isles. There are ways on and off. A boat three times a week and a daily flight. These go from Shetland Mainland. To get to Shetland Mainland requires a 15 hour boat journey from Aberdeen or a scheduled plane flight from said same city or further south at a cost.
There is one other way. To fly up there from further south in a small plane. In fact, that is pretty much the only way to reach Fair Isle in a hurry. But my extended sleep this morning surely meant that all such options would have been already bagged by others who share my impulsive and compulsive hobby.
With the next two days tied up, I resigned myself to moping around in the garden all day. I would start to make plans for Friday, but not right  now.

I attended to all the animals and it was while I was feeding the turkeys that my phone rang. Did I want to fly to Fair Isle today? You bet!
The precise details of our flight, including the pilot, the plane and the departure airfield, were still not clear, but I needed to start driving North towards the various options. If I left it until the plane was sorted, I wouldn't be able to get to the airfield soon enough.
So I headed cross country to the A1. This road is infuriating when you are in a hurry, as you basically travel at the speed of the slowest lorry or motorhome. There were even two tractors today.
As I approached the first airfield option, I received a phone call that we were flying from further North, up in Yorkshire. The pilot was driving down from Newcastle and should be with the plane by about 1.30pm. There was time for me to jump cars in with my other two birding friends and our arrival time at the airfield should be about the same.
With a flight time of about two and a half hours we should be landing on Fair Isle before 5pm, which would give us a couple of hours to see the bird before we would need to head off again. The last option to top up with fuel was 8pm at Sumburgh on Shetland Mainland. It is not possible to land and take off from Fair Isle landing strip with a full tank, so a refuel on the way home is necessary.

The plan was falling into place, except that the bird, released in to the bird observatory garden at 8.30am, had only shown once briefly at 11am. After plane preparations and putting fuel in, we eventually took off at 2.15pm with no further news of the bird. The weather was glorious so there were no hold ups. We could identify every feature of the landscape as we headed up the East coast and out across the sea towards the islands. I even had enough phone reception to ascertain that the bird had shown again briefly at about 2.30pm.
So that was two sightings in six hours. We would have two hours on the island! Goodbye finger nails.

I have only been to Fair Isle a few times, each time on a small plane, and I am averaging just over one new bird for each trip.
Savannah Sparrow and Siberian Rubythroat 2003. Chestnut-eared Bunting 2004. Swinhoe's Petrel 2013.
As we approached the island I hoped I could make it five lifers in four trips (or more!)

Fair Isle on a clear day

The view down over the island. We did a pass over the bird observatory before dropping down to land on the air strip.

We were concerned that nobody seemed to be looking into the observatory garden as we flew over.

Did this mean the bird had flown?

We had received news of the Song Sparrow's continued presence just before landing. This could be good news, but could also mean that it would not show again for a while.
The lovely thing about landing on small Scottish Islands is that there is always a welcoming committee and they always know about the bird. We were very pleased to hear that the bird was now appearing underneath a feeder with some regularity. We were also very grateful to be able to jump in the back of a car - on the floor, no seats! - and get a lift to the observatory.
Viewing of the bird was from the lounge. How very civilised!

One plane load of birders from Essex had got there before us and there were a few over from Shetland Mainland. There were also those who were up on holiday staying in the bird observatory.
We ran through into the lounge to the news that the bird was showing right now!

I always seem to miss being photographed at twitches, 

but I am actually in this photo. 

I raised my binoculars to peer over those kneeling on the floor in front of me and it only took a few seconds to pick up a movement on the ground deep in the vegetation. A couple of seconds later I had views of a stripy brown back and then the bird turned so that all I could see through the tiny gap was its head in full view. The other two hadn't seen it yet, but it wouldn't be long before it hopped to the outside of the garden into full view. I won't describe it. Pictures do the job better.

This bird had come all the way from North America. It was only the eighth Song Sparrow ever to grace our shores (but the fourth for Fair Isle following birds in 1959, 1969 and 1989.) Most long-time birders saw one in 1994 near Seaforth Docks which had undoubtedly hopped off a ship but is still deemed an acceptable tick. That was the last one.
It was one of those birds which, quite possibly, I would never get the chance to see in this country... until today!
We watched the Song Sparrow for a while, enjoying excellent views as it hopped around in the vegetation under the feeder, occasionally coming forwards through the fence and into the open. It was only about 15 feet away from us. We had not expected views to be anything like this.

Pictures courtesy of @FI_Obs twitter feed

The island also had another special visitor. For just over the hill, zooming around over a rocky beach, was a Crag Martin, a bird which I had only ever seen once in this country. It would be rude to ignore it while we were here. It was only a five minute jaunt over the hill, though you had to stand quite near the edge of the cliff for views down onto the beach. It took a while to pick the bird up, but it was obvious when it showed and easy to pick up from the swallows and house martins which were also catching insects. A gloriously sunny day, sitting on the cliff looking down on the beach and watching puffins looping round over the sea, a Crag Martin below us and a Song Sparrow just over the hill. Fair Isle at its very best.

My travel companions tracking the Crag Martin's every move.

We would have stayed longer but wanted to get back to the Song Sparrow, which continued to afford fantastic views over the next hour. We planned to stay till 7.15, but at 6.30pm we received an urgent message from the airfield that the weather was closing in and the wind was switching.
We bundled into the back of a car, sped to the airfield and jumped in the plane.
The weather can turn fast up here and we didn't even have time to bid farewell to other birders.

The pilot taxied down the airfield, swung it round and headed hell for leather into the wind. We took off into low cloud and were buffeted around a fair bit. The pilot had a heading which would clear us of the rocky crags, but it was still a bit hairy as we bumped around in thick cloud.
It was a relief to come out of the gloom and look back on the island which was shrouded in thick cloud.

After a quick fuel stop at Wick, we settled down for the journey home.
It had been quite a surreal day, not quite what I was expecting when I belatedly woke up this morning. Once again Fair Isle had delivered. What a magical place. Maybe one day I will return and stay for longer than a few hours.

Views from the plane were spectacular as the sun went down somewhere round about Teesside.
Our landing was smooth as could be and we bade farewell to the pilot before heading back down south.
I rolled back onto the farm at just past one in the morning.
It had been quite an eventful last sixteen hours.

Tomorrow, SATs tests. Poor kids.