Freetine

 No guests this weekend so we are making the most of it. Today we went to our favourite place, The Skerries. We haven't been on a Friday before, and you don't get so long, but it was lovely and not too rough!

It was quiet a Chiffchaff, willow warbler and 3 blackcaps. Another local birder, Andrew , found a stone curlew. Jill went to look but didn't find it, she didn't want to tramp around and disturb it as Andrew had said it was exhausted and Stonies are quite nervie at the best of times. Mostly sitting and scanning, after 30 mins, Jill gave up and left it alone somewhere.

Lots of Great Northern divers though.

We dropped off a hat, left behind by our guests, in Hamnavoe, did a Tesco's run and enjoyed a takeaway. Nice

Swiss Chocolate

 We had four days with new friends from Switzerland and Germany. They were very good company and our Swizz guests left us some yummy chocolate. They can definitely come again. We have had another two 10 out of 10 reviews on booking.com too. A good week.

Jill did a croft visit with one of the farming groups.

they are offering grants to aid waders and land management for them. It was a lovely evening, thank you Alan, your new scrape is lovely. It's a beautiful croft too.

We have fitted in a bit of bird watching too as the weather has been fantastic 

Mostly at Melby.

The starlings have been amazing too.

Jill has been tidying up outside. There is another step too.

Bit of time out

 No change overs today and our guests were off out. So, after some cleaning up we went for some birding. We started at Huxter, where we had a new patch tick, a Rook. Not many on Shetland, a few struggles and a small rookery at Kergord.

Not much else at Melby , Norby or Huxter though, apart from Fulmars and Shags, 

so we headed South to Sumburgh, Virkie and Boddam..

Guillemots,but no puffins.

We did find some pink feet geese and the long staying American wigeon