Shetland birding: Musselborough and the ferry journey starts 26th- 28th September

On Friday 26th September, together with John H., Tony S. and Mick D. we travelled up by car to take the ferry to Lerwick, Shetland. We travelled overnight and by first light on Saturday 27th September, we were at Musselborough estuary, near Edinburgh. A really superb place for birds we saw a close Guillemot in the water below, and 3 Grey Wagtails seen bu the edge. we saw another 2 comprising 3 Guillemots in all. Whilst further out we saw 8 Razorbills. 30 female Red- breasted Merganser as a group on the estuary, c300 Eiders (80% were females). We saw 7+ Velvet Scoters, a male Common Scoter, but disappointingly no sign of the White-winged Scoter. We also saw Cormorant, Gannets flying past c30 (half adult, half juveniles). 8 Wigeon, an Oystercatcher, Curlew, Whimbrel, 200 Bar-tailed Godwits, Dunlin . A Sandwich Tern flew around just offshore. A male Reed Bunting and male Stonechat seen. We later heard it was seen further along the bay near the Marsh Sandpiper site. This was to be my first trip to Shetland for over 40 years! It would prove to be an emotional one too as we would be revisiting some of the places I had visited over 40 years ago with my late mother, originally travelling over on the 5- 8 August in 1985. In 1985 (as now), we had travelled by the ferry from Aberdeen to Lerwick and then there had been near storm force south-east winds in 1985 which has caused a lot of sickness on board. My strategy was to stand on the outside deck and seawatch and it still is the best seawatch I have ever witnessed (not difficult given my recent seawatches, as my late friend Ricky used to say when we hadn't been successful 'the worst seawatch ever!') in 1985, the near gale force winds produced an incredible tally of 2 Cory's Shearwaters (still the only ones I have seen in UK waters), 6 Manx Shearwaters, 20 Bonxies or Great Skua, 15 Arctic Skuas (inc. 3 light phase birds), Puffin, 10 Razorbills, c150 fulmars including 3 Blue Phase birds. Skeins of 300 Barnacle Geese and 500 Pink-footed Geese flew overhead. The next port of call was the Marsh Sandpiper site at Musselborough lagoons. We walked across a field and then through a wood to a concrete hide, looking out were 2 large pools. There were Teal, a Spotted Redshank, 4+ Ruff, 60 Candada Goose, Stock Dove, Mallard, 2 female Pheasant close in by the first pool. Whilst finally at the back pool on the left hand side the pale grey/ white super Marsh Sandpiper was busy feeding and it promptly walked left and out of sight! It went missing for 10 minutes before it was relocated at another large right hand pool, where it fed at the nearside but often obscured by vegetation before it walked around the right hand side to the back always feeding. Returning to 2025, we travelled by ferry standing on the stern of the ship looking back at Aberdeen harbour, we spotted a fantastic Bottlenose Dolphin swimming right of the habour entrance and its dorsal fin and back were seen several times when if 'furrowed' through the water. On the Ferry journey at the start we saw up to 8 Razorbills, I saw a fine Manx Shearwater shearing over the water over to the right (my first since 2021 and sightings at tenby). , Fulmar and 5 Kittiwake. We then had the ship's fish and chips meal which was OK and then we retired to our pods for the night in Cabin no 1. Big mistake, the pods are basically reclining chairs but I didn't get a lot of sleep maybe 3 hours tops and even less on the return journey, always book a cabin, more expensive but worth it. The sleep deprivation wasn't helped as we were situated 2nd row back from the entrance door to the cabin, which if the door not shut carefully slammed shut with some force guaranteed to wake up anyone fortunate enough to have drifted into sleep.