Pallas’s Sandgrouse – Loch of Hillwell, Mainland, Shetland, 27th May 1990
The most epic twitch trip of all time; involving two eight hour ferry trips to get to Shetland, followed by a manic drive from Lerwick to South Mainland. Dave McAleavy and I were in the middle of our ‘Scottish specialities’ trip, which included seeing various Scottish specialities such as Chequered Skipper, Capercaillie and King Eider on mainland Scotland before continuing on to Shetland, where our trip would ultimately culminate with visiting Fair Isle and staying at the Bird Observatory. Fair Isle Bird Observatory in late May / early June, had, necessarily, been booked some while previously.....!!
As a result, we fortuitously also saw the Pallas’s Sandgrouse on Sunday the 27th May, by which time it had been around for eight days; it had been around since Saturday the 19th May!
The full story is as follows.
Dave and I had commenced our trip during the preceding week; I had recently finished work at ERL and started work at Bechtel on my return, on the 4th June, and ‘doing Scotland’ between times had been planned for some weeks. On the evening of Wednesday, the 23rd May(?) I travelled by train from Luton to Chesterfield, having been seen off by Elizabeth following her visit to St. Albans. I was still in the process of organising all that was necessary in terms of my newly created limited company which was essential to enable me to work on the Shell North West Eythlene Pipeline Project, and so Dad had arranged a meeting with Martin Bruno Accountants in Chesterfield for me on the morning of Thursday the 24th May. After this I presumably travelled by train to Wigan to meet up with Dave...... .
Having driven to Scotland late on the Thursday, we had slept (or not) in Dave’s car at Braco, seeing Black Grouse and Osprey early the following morning, before continuing on to Loch Arkaig for Chequered Skipper. We then continued on by driving to Speyside, where eventually we again slept (or not) in Dave’s car at Forest Lodge before finally seeing Capercaillie the following morning, that of Saturday the 26th May. Later that day (we’d again had a very early start!) we continued our successes by seeing King Eider at the Ythan estuary before catching the ferry from Aberdeen to Stromness. That’s right. Stromness. In Orkney.
For some reason lost in the mists of time the route we took from Aberdeen to Lerwick was via Stromness so, having arrived in Stromness in the evening, we ventured into town and attempted to watch International Friendly football matches in the Stromness Hotel. We hadn’t quite planned for an overnight stay in Orkney, so we sneaked back onto the ferry and found somewhere to crash out on board; we were shattered after two very early starts and two very long days. And we’d only just begun!
The following morning, as alluded to in the Gyr Falcon account, we twiddled our thumbs in Stromness just waiting for the ferry to eventually sail for Lerwick. When we finally departed, we were casually standing on deck and admiring the mightily impressive Old Man of Hoy as we sailed past it. Then someone remarked, “There’s been a Gyr Falcon up there...”. D’oh! Frantic scanning ensued, to no avail. Worse, we would have had time to get there earlier that morning, if only we had known about it!
Anyway, it was possibly about now that we also found out about the Pallas’s Sandgrouse. It was pre-pager days, and I’d not exactly had lots of time to pump coins into a payphone to listen to the Birdline message. And anyway, even if I had know it was there soon after it was discovered during a bird race on Saturday the 19th May, it wasn’t going to stay around for a week or more was it?
Dave tells me that once we got to Lerwick at 20:00 on the evening of Sunday the 27th May, I did indeed feed a payphone with coins and then returned to him ashen-faced saying it was still there and that we had to hire a car that night..... !!!!!!
Now, we weren’t twitching it as such, as we had planned our visit to Shetland for weeks before, but within minutes of arriving in Lerwick we were twitching it!
Bolt’s hire car duly sourced, there followed a drive ‘of confusion and tension’ as my notes put it. In a convoy with other birders who had been on the ferry we arrived in the vicinity but then couldn’t find the bird at all, despite frenetic chasing about. Probably to try to maintain some sort of cool, I withdrew to view from afar the antics of the birders. Anyway, our intrepid fellow travellers located, or rather, were directed to, their object of desire. Although by now it was 22:00 the light was still reasonable (thank fuck for the simmer dim……..).
However, the bird was not very active, to put it mildly. Initially, it was resting head on, in a stubble field. At this time I noted that an analogy would be Grey Partridge x female Pheasant as all that was viewable was the orange looking head and strongly barred sandy buff upperparts. However, seemingly realising our plight, this star bird first preened, then wandered around, confronted a rabbit, flapped its wings and then returned to its previous, inactive, mode.
Needless to say, we were back for more the following night, having been to Hermaness on Unst and back...... .
Pallas's Sandgrouse, South Mainland, Shetland, May 1990 , 'live' at the scene, indicating the simmer dim light conditions, if nothing else (photograph credited to Dave McAleavy)
Pallas's Sandgrouse, South Mainland, Shetland, May 1990 (photograph credited to Robin Chittenden).
No comments:
Post a Comment