A Little Bunting on Shetland 4th October 2024

After the excitement of yesterday we returned to earth and a familiar place, The Burn of Sound just on the fringes of Lerwick and where I had seen a Common Rosefinch, not too many days previously.This site is checked regularly by birders and for a couple of days a confiding Little Bunting had been reported from here.

On a rather dank and dreary morning we joined a handful of birders standing hopefully on the wooden bridge that spans the burn waiting for the Little Bunting to show itself in an adjacent alder tree, if indeed it was still around.For a good twenty minutes it looked like it wasn't as we saw little apart from three Common (Mealy Redpolls) that came to feed close to us underneath the alder tree by the burn.

Common Redpoll

One birder jumped the gun crying 'I've got the bunting' as the redpolls, deep in shade under the tree did a good impression of being the so far absent bunting.

Fifteen minutes later the real thing flew in but further up the slope that rises from the stream and luckily was still close to the footpath. Transferring there we found it in a small birch, delicately and methodically picking black aphids from the undersides of the yellowing leaves. 

For a long time it remained in the centre of the small tree, obscured by a myriad of twigs and leaves  contentedly and ceaselessly picking the aphids off the leaves but once they had all been examined it moved outwards to the furthest twigs and leaves, becoming much more visible and it has to be said photographable.It was here that you could appreciate just how small it was.

They are, as their name implies diminutive, about Linnet sized and superficially resemble their larger and commoner cousin the Reed Bunting but differ in their bolder white eye ring and bright chestnut cheeks.This bird was quite fearless and showed a total lack of concern at our presence and I am sure if you wished you could have walked right up to it.

For the best part of an hour it fed in its favoured small tree or the one adjacent  allowing us plenty of opportunities to photograph it

Little Buntings are a rare but regular vagrant to Shetland in autumn and are guaranteed to draw admirers. They breed in northeast Europe and across Russia usually wintering in northern India and northern areas of South East Asia although a few are found wintering in Britain in most years.