A Red breasted Flycatcher at Grutness 20th September 2024

We hit the ground running on our arrival in a typically grey Lerwick morning.There is always a thrill that courses through you at the realisation that anything can turn up birdwise here although it looks so bleak.The promise of rarities and of birds I  would never see in Oxfordshire is a potent mixture of anticipation and excitement.What greater incentive to get out there and start looking.

We headed further south towards virtually the end of the main island, Mainland, to a very well known  birding location, a garden  that you can overlook from the road at a place called Grutness which is near to Sumburgh Head, the southernmost tip of Shetland.

Looking over the garden wall, a line of syscamores hunker along the far wall, their limbs twisted and contorted, the trees stunted by the strong winds that blow in off the sea and the spent leaves curled like burnt paper until they too can resist the wind's attentions for no longer. These trees have provided sanctuary for many rare and not so rare migrants over the years and most birders stop here to check the trees as the birds can change almost daily in the right conditions.

This morning, via the various birding WhatsApp groups one joins on arriving on Shetland we learnt  that a Red Breasted Flycatcher had been seen in the sycamores but was noted as being very elusive. There was also a Lesser Whitethroat, a Willow Warbler and a couple each of Common Chiffchaff and Goldcrest keeping it company.

These tiny, sprite like will o' the wisp birds are a scarce but regular vagrant to Shetland and there is never a year when they are not found.They are very small and move incredibly fast, rarely are they still for more than a second or two, as they flick and whizz through the boughs and twigs  to catch the tiny insects they feed on.

When you see one up close, in a rare moment of inactivity it is impossible not to be charmed by their endearing persona. Robin like but without the truculence is how I would describe them. Most are young birds in a dull plumage of pale buff underparts and brown upperparts with a black tail that shows white flashes when they fly.

I caught a flash of white today as it dived into the shelter of a sycamore. then there it was again no more than a blur of buff as it shot into another tree.Would it ever settle?

A birder stood next to me said

There it is on that branch, right in the open

I could not find it

A familiar situation but then there it was again

It's back  he said. Same branch

I looked and found it 

Hurrah!

I carried on and discovered it had favoured perches that it invariably returned to.Sheltered branches that were low to the ground, the wind unable to be forceful due to the wall. For long periods it disappeared, so small amongst the wind flickering leaves it was at times impossible to make it out. Its plumage the shade of the dead leaves also an aid in keeping its presence secret, only for it to reveal itself when it flew out after an insect.

I embarked on a rollercoaster of frustration and triumph as I pitted myself against this most difficult and elusive of subjects to watch and photograph

We decided to come back on another day to try and see it better but when we did now found it had been joined by a Spotted Flycatcher, the larger bird not unnaturally in the ascendancy and causing the smaller bird to absent itself. However when the flycatchers were at opposite ends of the line of trees it worked well enough.

The Spotted Flycatcher followed a similar feeding pattern to the Red breasted Flycatcher, hunting insects low down where the wind was less fierce, sitting in the lee of a bough for shelter before flying out to snatch a passing insect. Both birds would occasionally settle in the grass to seize something  not what you would expect to see in their normal habitat but these are vagrants well outside their comfort zone and clinging onto an existence that has become even more precarious.

I often wonder if these birds do indeed succumb or do they re-orientate successfully and make it to their true winter homes. Many young birds die in the first months of life and maybe these are part of that unfortunate but entirely natural statistic.

In a flight of whimsy I look at them as my mind recalls our overnight journey to Lerwick and looking out of our cabin window in the middle of a sleepless night at the passing white crests of the stormy sea and I wonder at these  scraps of life making their perilous journeys across the vastness of sea in the dark, as they must.

to be continued