Confessions of a lapsed birder

Siberian Thrush – near the quay, North Ronaldsay, Orkney, 5^th October 1992

First winter male Siberian Thrush. ..... and as such, not actually the one that is detailed in the main part of this account, but my second one, which was seen many, many years later on Unst ('cos I'm greedy 😅).

My account in the article I wrote for the ‘My Best Days Birding in Scotland’ series in Birding Scotland replicated as part of the Eye-browed Thrush new species account ended with, “And as good as that twitch was it did not compare with the previous days eventful birding, my best days birding in Scotland,” which was a reference to the twitch we went on the next day for the Siberian Thrush on neighbouring North Ronaldsay.

As alluded to, during the evening after the Eye-browed Thrush twitch, plans were being finalised for a boat from Fair Isle to North Ronaldsay so that the twitchers amongst us could see the Siberian Thrush there.

A little bit of context here. North Ronaldsay was in the middle of a blinding spell of birds. Just a week or so before the Siberian Thrush turned up on Thursday the 1st of October, there had been a Yellow-browed Bunting between the 22nd and 23rd September and a Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler between the 23rd and 25th September.

The occurrence of these two species on the neighbouring North Ronaldsay (and the coincidence of both of them on the 23rd?) had proved too much for some of those on Fair Isle (which, comparatively, was undergoing a quiet spell), and seemingly, charters had been arranged. These were in the form of flights .... early instances of cheque book twitching may have been involved...... .

Consequently, a week later, either the cheque book twitchers where no longer around, or they weren’t up for the financial hit of another charter, or certainly not another flight........ . Meanwhile, those birders at the Observatory with Shetland affinities were sticking to their ‘never twitch south’ mantra and weren’t interested in any potential twitch to North Ronaldsay, all of 30 miles away (and visible on a clear day).

Dave Suddaby, who at the time was working for the RSPB in Shetland and staying at the Obs, was clearly hacked off about all the moaning about, “Why aren’t we on North Ronaldsay?” and, “If only we could get to North Ronaldsay”. So, suddenly one evening whilst we were grumping in the Common Room he asked us in a rather challenging way, “Do you want me to arrange a boat?”

We did. Obviously.

So it was that we went on a boat trip on Sunday the 4th October. And what a boat trip! As mentioned, the article referenced ended with, “And as good as that twitch was it did not compare with the previous days eventful birding, my best days birding in Scotland”.

However, this is poetic licence. This twitch was truly epic and very dramatic and ..... plain mad.

At 06:00 on the morning of the 4th October we were assembled on the jetty at North Haven. There were some 22 of us. All eagerly awaiting the boat that had been chartered from Lerwick for us by Dave Suddaby to take us from Fair Isle to North Ronaldsay, and back.... .

But where was it? It was still dark, and there was no sign of the boat. However, it did eventually arrive, appearing very suddenly as it was sailing with no navigation lights at all, despite the dark. It was ever so skilfully guided to a halt alongside the jetty; no back-thrust was used so it just rammed into the jetty, nearly killing one of our number in the process. Worse (if that were possible?), at the time the North Haven was being upgraded. The jetty was being improved and modernised using huge pre-cast concrete blocks, and a new breakwater was being constructed using huge rough-hewn stone blocks. Some of the still to be used concrete blocks were stored under water, and equally, the new breakwater was only partially constructed, and as such the boat passed over the top of these hazards. The crew of the Good Shepherd knew all about them, and so avoided them in their routine activities. The crew of our boat clearly didn’t but fortunately did...... .

Anyway, without trepidation(?) we boarded at the start of what proved to be a 4.5 hour crossing between Fair Isle and North Ronaldsay, or on average 6 or 7 miles an hour, or jogging speed maybe... .

Fortunately, it was flat calm, which provided for a relatively uneventful crossing at least until we got to Orkney waters....... .

It turned out that our chartered vessel was the ‘Storm Petrel Special’ which usually crossed from Sandwick to Mousa so that tourists could visit the Mousa Broch (or maybe it was the Noss boat?). It was crewed by two veteran class Shetlanders, who were evidently the ‘hands’ on the boat (who in hindsight were involved in some cash in hand ‘foreigner’). It quickly emerged that they had never left mainland Shetland, and as such had no experience of Fair Isle waters, let alone Orkney ones. It also emerged that they were navigating our course to North Ronaldsay using a road atlas (which had clearly worked in terms of them getting from Lerwick or Sandwick to Fair Isle, but...... ).

Just over three years previously there was the Marchioness disaster in London when a pleasure boat sank after a collision. 51 people had drowned. Five and a half years earlier, the roll-on roll-off car ferry Herald of Free Enterprise had capsized after sailing with its bow doors open..... . 191 people had died. Subsequently, regulations about safety (inventories of passenger numbers, quotas of numbers of passengers, adequate life-jackets for all passengers, etc.) were all massively strengthened. Except, it seemed on our vessel; none of this was apparent. No wonder the navigation lights were off!

Anyway, we somehow sighted land and headed for it. Fortunately, it was Orkney..... . So it was that we directed them to North Ronaldsay..... .As the bird was near the quay on the south-west promontory of the island those in the know suggested a course to the west of the island for deeper water. This advice was duly ignored, and therefore we nearly grounded in the shallows and ploughed through some fishing gear. Once our trusty salty seamen had freed the fishing gear from propeller, we finally limped on towards the quay on North Ronaldsay. We were delivered there just 4.5 hours after we had departed.

At the quay the warden, Kevin Woodridge and his assistants were waiting for us. Once we had disembarked, we were escorted all of 200 or 300 m along the road to the bird. This was on the bank between the road and the beach where it was feeding in the open in the warm sunshine, and if not, scuttling underneath an abandoned pallet on the bank.

Good views were obtained from the road and from the beach. It was a stunning bird in an ‘odd’ (not typically illustrated) plumage. It was clearly a first winter bird, and a first winter female at that. It was slightly smaller than a Blackbird and superficially similar to a first-winter female one.

And then we got back on the boat... . Oh, and on the return journey we were accompanied by Franco Mareovic who seized the opportunity to get from North Ronaldsay to Fair Isle for free. Thankfully, even so, the return journey was uneventful, though we had good views of Risso’s Dolphins and also Sooty Shearwaters.

A truly epic trip then.

Twitching. I can handle it…… .

Occasionally, still to this day, I have that revelatory moment when chatting to another random birder somewhere (generally in Shetland) and we’re explaining to each other why we don’t need Siberian Thrush because we saw one on North Ronaldsay when we were on Fair Isle and we say, “You weren’t on that boat were you?”. We then have a fantastic reminisce about this truly mad escapade.

Precisely this happened in October 2016 we were birding somewhere in the north of Unst when news broke of a Siberian Thrush at Uyeasound. Incredibly, Ken Shaw managed to get the van up to 94 miles an hour (or 49 miles an hour as we later told Amanda) as we hurtled south.

Once we parked up in Uyeasound we were nearly equally fast (over the first 50 m or so) as we dashed for the bird. Eventually, after a long nervous wait, we each got very good views of it after it suddenly decided to flee its refuge in the back garden of one of a row of houses and fly off to the rear of a nearby modern fishing boat shed, nearly taking out Jonny Holliday en route (as a Yorkshireman he failed to take what would have been a very good slip catch).

Having found a White’s Thrush on Unst the previous year, and having seen another there the next day, Ken and I were truly the Zoothera kings of Unst (mainly because others weren’t able to see our White’s Thrush, or refused to twitch other people’s birds, but all the same....).