Cosmic: Britain's first Siberian Accentor

Sometimes you're in the right place at the right time. And, on Sunday afternoon, after nine days on Shetland, we were just about that. Minutes away from checking in for our flight back to Aberdeen, we were sat outside the terminal when John's pager started wailing and his increasingly hysterical voice just about managed to squeeze our "Siberian Accentor ... Shetland ... at Scousburgh ..!"

There wasn't any need for thought. We piled back in to our hired minibus we were in the process of returning and bombed off in no time. Fifteen minutes later and we were watching Britain's first Siberian Accentor happily feeding away in an unsuspecting quarry on the western slopes of Mossy Hill. Oblivious of the carnage unfolding around it, the accentor performed to within a few metres, feeding with the voraciousness of a newly-arrived migrant. I was utterly thrilled to simply be part of the crowd that evening - I can only image what Judd Hunt must have thought when he first clapped eyes on this perfect rarity.

I'll update the blog in the coming days with a more general Shetland review - for the meantime here's a few shots of the accentor.

 Siberian Accentor, Mossy Hill, Shetland, 9 October 2016

 The bird's favoured quarry complete with appreciative crowd.

Siberian Tit

After having had pretty poor views of this species on the Ural Ridge west of Severouralsk, Russia, it was nice to watch a pair attending a nest box near Kuusamo on our final morning in Finland. A few shots below.

Siberian Jay

I was previously quite surprised that we didn't see Siberian Jay on our trip to the Urals in June 2014. Having spent days walking around seemingly perfect habitat up on the Ural Ridge, and having recorded other tricky species such as Siberian Tit during that time, it seemed unfortunate that we'd not seen any. However no other team has yet recorded the jay there and having now seen how inconspicuous the species can be in the summer months, I take the surprise back!

We were in the fortunate position to be taken to see what may well be the most southerly pair of Siberian Jays in Finland (or at least the most southerly known pair), not far from Parikkala. I knew this species was tame, but I wasn't expect them to respond to whistling and subsequently exhibit such a soft spot for cheese that they'd happily take it from the hand! Given that I was keener to actually feed the jays myself, I didn't manage any decent shots of them at this site. Had we not been shown them in an entirely innocuous looking patch of forest, we'd never have known they were there and would undoubtedly have driven straight past - a fine example of the 'needle in a haystack' situation when searching for boreal specialities in Finland, and illustrating why local knowledge is essential in these endless forests.

Hannu Siitonen, Olympic javelin silver medallist at Montreal 1976, feeds one of the Parikkala jays

Siberian Jay, Parikkala

Further north we encountered a family of confiding Siberian Jays at Valtavaara, at the traditional Konttainen layby site. Though they didn't succumb to the lure of cheese like the pair at Parikkala did, they were fantastically showy and afforded great photo opportunities.

Russia trip report, June 2014

It's taken a while, but this leviathan of a document can now be read below. If you would like a copy, please email me. Here's hoping it comes in useful for anyone thinking of making the trip out to Russia - we had a brilliant two weeks out there, and the birding is absolutely superb.