A slightly traumatic football event occurred a couple of days ago involving a penalty shoot-out and a French lunatic. But this cheered me up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iad3gV-9C1U

P.S. There aren’t any birds around. It’s cold and shit.

I took a phone call this afternoon at work from a resident of Levenwick, describing a very big raptor sitting in a field, eating what might have been a dead lamb. As there had been a White-tailed Eagle at Sandwick yesterday, I not unreasonably concluded that the bird in question was likely to be a White-tailed Eagle. I summoned reinforcements in the form of Mr Pete Ellis, who was glad to escape the office as he’d already used up his quota of swear words for the week on the RSPB printer.

On arrival at Levenwick, we were pointed in the direction of said raptor, which was still lumbering around in the fields. Rather splendidly (from my point of view anyway), it was a Red Kite, a rare bird here and a Shetland tick for me. Rather unsplendidly, it was very foggy at Levenwick so the photos below are shite.

Anyway, thank you to the good people of Levenwick who let us know about this bird and for putting up with us parking in the middle of the road in an erratic fashion.

Odd goings-on in the last couple of days. It’s meant to be spring (or something approaching it) but it seems to have turned into late autumn. It’s freezing cold, it keeps snowing and the wind is most definitely a horrid north-westerly. Strangest of all, however, has been the big arrival of geese in south mainland, with began with 112 Pink-feet in the field by the house on April 20th. Since then I have seen loads of the bastards – 280 at Scatness, 256 at Fleck and 250 outside the house again – along with a few Barnacles, none of which decided to enter the Virkie/Toab patch.

All this excitement wouldn’t be right without yet another house tick fiasco – this duly occurred yesterday morning when a Canada Goose (rare in Shetland) plonked itself on the pool in the morning. Unfortunately, yet highly predictably, I was elsewhere and unable to see it. So not only was it the third house tick dip in just over a week, the stupid escaped piece of shit then visited both the Sumburgh and Scatness areas, enabling those participants to see it. Pish tosh and tits.

I seem to have been accused recently of taking the Great South Mainland (plus Quarff and Whalsay and possibly Fetlar) Patch Year List Competition 2010 © too seriously (see here). And I also seem to have been accused of taking the ‘How many song titles can you get into the title of a blog post’ game too seriously as well (see here). Not true. It’s all just a game.

However, I would like to point out that, at this present time, the Virkie/Toab patch year list is 8 ahead of Scatness, 13 ahead of Whalsay, 9 ahead of Quarff and an unspecified/unknown number ahead of Sumburgh, Quendale and Fetlar (despite recent Osprey and Crane fiascos). And I’ve now got 12 song titles in blog posts. Beat that you fuckers.

Normally I hate seagulls. Apparently they eat children’s ice creams, peck old ladies to death to steal their chips and are the cause of all diseases in the world. However, I like seagulls when they are rare and I’ve not seen them in Shetland before. Which is why I went to Hillwell this evening to see a Ring-billed Gull. Hurrah.

A Willow Warbler was singing in the willows today, which made me glad of heart. There was also a veritable finch-fest in the garden; a Brambling, a Chaffinch and 3 Siskins. Unfortunately, for the second time in just over 24 hours, I left the house at the wrong time. Less than half an hour after I’d gone, I got a phone call from The Bell: “there’s a Crane coming your way”. I was in Toab, he was in my garden. The Crane somehow vanished into thin air in the time it took me to evacuate the house I was in and run around outside like a twat. Two house ticks in two days, both missed by a matter of minutes. Hairy arseholes.

After a morning at work I nipped home for a quick lunch. There was a jolly selection of migrants around the house, including a Siskin and a Chaffinch in the garden, a Reed Bunting in the willows and a Knot on the pool. Thinking it was safe to vacate the area, I headed to Mousa just after midday to put up some signs. I’d not even got to Cunningsburgh when I got a text from Mr Minton: “Osprey from your garden”. Toss.

Just to keep anybody in the slightest bit interested informed, I’ve started work with the RSPB again (I actually started on March 22nd), as Assistant Warden for the South Shetland reserves. So it’s another summer of skuas, Arctic Terns and Puffins for me, which is no bad thing. The down side is that I will be spending far too much time in The Bell’s patch at Sumburgh.