Confessions of a lapsed birder

Blue-cheeked Bee-eater – Asta House, near Scalloway, Shetland, 24^th June 1997

The news of this broke (me) on the afternoon of Sunday the 22nd June 1997, at about 16:00, as Gilly and I browsed our way around the Dougal Evans Walled Garden Centre, at Hopetoun House, just outside South Queensferry, as you do.

I ‘broke’ as it was eight years since the last one, which had been at the somewhat more accessible Cowden in North Humberside. Well remembered because (like the Mowbray Park, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear Baillon’s Crake) I dipped it, as I was moving into 8 Chatsworth Court in St. Albans, whilst Paul Pugh, my birding best mate and arch-twitching rival, scored. The pressure was on!

Much of the rest of Sunday afternoon was spent ‘phoning airports and British Airways or (offshoots of) with little or no tangible success. I was no nearer knowing what I was doing come Monday. In between attempts to work, I continued to make calls to BA and P. and O. Ferries, slowly formulating my strategy. This was not swayed even when offers of lifts on the pager began, although I did ‘phone Dick Filby, seeking his input on twitching it, including advice on any other birders who might be doing so.

So it was that at about 14:50 I left South Queensferry prepared, or at least prepared as I could ever be, for a long twitch. I was still running the car in after its engine refit, but the journey was well timed, or would have been if it wasn’t for rush hour traffic chaos in Aberdeen.

Anyway, I made it, and not knowing anymore than it was showing in the late afternoon, I was off to twitch a mega in Shetland, complete with all its’ memories of successful and unsuccessful previous twitches. It was a bouncy, chilly trip, the wind coming straight from the Arctic, and causing quite a swell. Despite, or perhaps because of, several seasickness pills past their use by date, I was reasonably comfortable throughout the trip, and managed to sleep even though the reclining chairs were less than ideal for sleeping in. However, I coped better than most, and breakfasted well, before attempting a sea watch, which was abandoned quickly as it was just too cold.

Finally, we arrived in Lerwick, on time. I disembowelled (!), (tripods are so dangerous!), and marched to the nearest taxi, and asked for Asta House. After some debating and prompting a fare of £6.50 was agreed, and so we were off. At just about 08:10 we arrived at what was thought by me and the decent old taxi-driver to be the said Asta House, but by way of confirmation I asked a local woman, who in turn asked me if I was looking for ‘the bird’. She told me it was still there and I paid the taxi driver. At first I could only hear it, which was very frustrating, as it was obviously very close in the crown of a stunted sycamore in the well vegetated (for Shetland) garden. It was only after the local woman had departed and a local man had arrived that I finally located it by moving along the top of the roadside bank against the garden fence. It was sat on the top of the sycamore on wind stunted dead branches just above the canopy, and so slightly obscured from some angles. However, it obliged us with crippling, although back on and slightly obscured, views. He too had to go so I was left on my own with an eighth for the British Isles.

There was the occasional further passing local, including Pete Ellis. After some while it moved from its favourite perch, possibly due to my noises in an attempt to get it to face me. Anyway, it then proceeded to move from perch to perch within the same wooded (?) gardens and was obliging enough to let me fire off many shots - some quite close and with flash – Reg Mellish (er, let’s say, a very early incarnation of a modern-day togger) eat your heart out! After it had had enough it made its way back from perch to perch to its favourite perch in the sycamore.

Here it showed better than ever whilst I showed it to a mini-bus full of students from de Montford University, on a seabird ringing expedition to Yell.

Whilst they were watching it suddenly left its favourite perch and flew to the nearby golf course and began hawking for more insects and then perching on the adjacent barbed wire fences alongside the golf-course and road. However, when the mini-bus and another vehicle went past, it was flushed and flew alongside the mini-bus over the golf course, and away.

I followed it on foot when it didn’t return but failed to locate it, so I returned, if only to grip-off the late-comers, including the birders on the charter from Inverness I had considered trying to get on.

It was a stunning bird. Overall it was bright green with some browner and bluer areas. It had a long tail with long pointed central tail feathers and also long wings. It had a long black eye-stripe terminating with an upward sweep behind the eye, and separating two powder blue patches on the upper and lower face. It also had a white forehead, yellow chin, and orange-red upper breast. In comparison with European Bee-eater it was more slightly more attenuated, in particular because of the longer tail, with a longer decurved bill that was all dark, as were what was seen of the feet. Otherwise, was very similar in size, shape and overall appearance, both in flight and at rest. The call was similar as well.

After some general socialising (gloating?) with the assembled birders I walked into Scalloway and to the recommended North Atlantic Fisheries College, which proved to be a fitting place for a meal that was excellent. I had seen a stunning bird when no other twitchers had seen it that day, at least until it was re-discovered late in the evening. I returned on the ferry that night feeling very comfortable with life, and was, in effect, back at work by 10:30 on the Wednesday, having taken just one whole day off. A supremely successful grip back! That said, I was equally a tad uncomfortable, as the same crew who had twitched in by charter plane from Inverness were returning on the St. Clair ‘with’ me, having dipped….. .

Many years later, when Chris Pendlebury and I stayed in Scalloway in September 2020, we birded Asta House every morning, and I was invited to bird the excellent gardens from the inside, rather than from the roadside, by Janet Caterall, the co-owner of Asta House. When we discussed the Blue-cheeked Bee-eater I had twitched, she showed me her signed photograph of it which she had been presented by Bill Oddie, and I was photographed holding it in front of the sycamore the bird had most often frequented.