Superb Shetland - Hornemann's Arctic Redpoll - 3rd October 2022

For the last two years my twitching pal Mark and myself have headed for Shetland to spend the first ten days of October birding, hoping to see rare and vagrant birds either from Siberia in the east or North America in the west. This is the prime time for such rarities to arrive and many other birders now go to Shetland in September and October for precisely the same purpose.

This year we chose to visit Shetland from the 3rd-13th of October, basing ourselves in Scalloway the ancient capital of Shetland.During our time there the island was battered by very strong westerly gales which we assumed precluded any rare arrivals from the east but held out great promise of something very good being blown in from the other direction.

Rather than a day by day litany of what we saw I have chosen to recount the experiences that I consider to be the highlights of our trip and it is fair to say this was easily the most rewarding trip we have done to Shetland so far, as an almost continuous arrival of very rare birds and some huge surprises kept us on our toes throughout.

Hornemann's Arctic Redpoll

Up to five a year of this arctic species can occur on the northern isles of Scotland, chiefly in Shetland.In some years there can be influxes, such as twenty two in 2009 and thirty in 2012 but usually it is far less and it is always a notable event when one or more are found.This autumn has been a good one on Shetland and at least five, possibly more, were around during our stay, of which we saw four. They breed on Ellesmere and Baffin Island, Canada and northern Greenland southwards to Scoresby Sound. In winter they disperse randomly southwards and can reach northwest Europe on an irregular basis.

A very confiding individual of this striking and very beautiful species had chosen the small settlement of Toab in which to spend some time.Toab is situated very close to Sumburgh Air Terminal which itself lies almost at the southern tip of Shetland. Our first visit to look for the redpoll was unsuccessful although we had been told it was usually to be found somewhere in the small collection of houses that lie either side of a narrow main street. It was known to feed on weeds by the roadside and was usually on its own as the local House Sparrows, of which there were no shortage, did not take kindly to its presence.

If and when we saw it we knew we would surely not mistake its startlingly white appearance which gives rise to its nickname of 'snowball' and is probably what upset the drab sparrows as it looked so different. We spent a fruitless hour and a half searching for it amongst the small group of houses that comprises Toab, wandering down by old farm buildings and machinery rusting away in the long grass, looking at field edges and unkempt gardens but with no luck at all. We gave up and resolved to return on another day.

Talking to another birder, later that day who had seen the redpoll, we learned it had a favoured area that it would return to regularly. It was at the back of the houses, towards where a quiet dead end road met some farm buildings and fields.Here it would come to feed amongst a small patch of neglected weeds growing below a dry stone wall flanking the roadside. We were told we would probably have to wait but when it eventually flew in the redpoll would prove to be very confiding

We returned the next afternoon and there it was but it was flighty, being chivvied around by a truculent sparrow and soon disappeared but we had seen enough to know it was relatively approachable.Thus we hatched a plan to use the car as a hide and return the next morning to park a few metres from the weedy patch and await developments.

For an hour we waited at the side of the dead end road. The wind was blowing hard from the west and looking away to my right I watched the white crested waves ceaselessly running from the wind and beyond, the bleak but rugged beauty of barren moors rising up and leading out to a blunt ended headland forever facing down the power of the North Sea. Despite the rough water Gannets were diving for fish, the spray from their individual collisions with the sea, creating an explosion of white water that blew away on the wind. Four Whooper Swans made slow but steady progress into the wind, moving towards the open sea. A wheatear perched jauntily nearby on a long foresaken rusting car with incongruously a german number plate and all the while there was a constant accompaniment of helicopter and aeroplane engines from the surprisingly busy airport. Secluded and isolated Toab may be but quiet it certainly wasn't.

Mark whispered

There it is

The redpoll had flown in and perched on an abandoned metal farm trailer near the wall. Tiny against the bulk of the trailer on which it had perched it still stood out. Its body of white and pale grey, ghostly.It perched here for a few seconds, checking all was well and then descended to feed on the weeds below, at first shuffling along at the edges but then disappearing into the tangle of weeds, its grey and white body occasionally visible amongst the green stalks and leaves.

It re-emerged closer to us and revealed all the diagnostic features of its kind. A tiny, corn yellow bill, so small it seemed almost to have been pushed into its face by some unforeseen collision.The black surrounds to the base of the bill, the buff suffusion on a head with a prominent square of red on its fore crown were also pointers to its identity. But it was the pure white underparts that drew your attention, gleaming against the vegetation whilst the streaked greyish white upperparts showed a prominent white wing bar on each wing.

We watched the redpoll for some fifteen minutes as it fed on the seeds. A male House Sparrow accompanied it but there was no sign of the previously seen aggression.The sparrow departed and the redpoll fed on until, for no apparent reason, it flew up and away. We debated whether to hang on in the hope of a return but that hardly looked imminent so we left Toab, resolving we might come back on another day