Varied Thrush

Early evening on 27 October 2021 I was sat at my computer pottering on with work when, at about 6.30pm, I received a terse message: ‘Varied Thrush, Orkney’. Whaaatt? I nearly fell off my chair.

There’s something about seconds for Britain. Firsts, even if regularly touted as ‘the next biggie’, are still by their very nature a complete shock when they do turn up, and some are so left-field that they defy any but the most optimistic level of expectation. And everybody needs them. Seconds, on the other hand – well, they’ve turned up before, so if you didn’t see the first one they sit there as a gaping hole on your list, gnawing away at your consciousness. Sometimes the first one was even twitchable, which means that some birders have seen one and you haven’t, adding to the pressure. Add to that the fact that the previous Varied Thrush was nearly 40 years ago and was an unlikely vagrant then – a second one was ‘cosmic mindf*cker’ time indeed!

(I’ll leave aside for the moment that the original Nanquidno bird was a very rare and unusual monochrome colour form, and all the discussion on that over the years. The simple facts were that it was accepted and there was another one, on Orkney, now. Eeekkk!)

Further details quickly emerged, while I was franticly trying to make travel arrangements. The bird was on Papa Westray, and had probably been present several days already. Paul C was near Land’s End, visiting friends, and was hastily extricating himself and packing a bag before heading back up, so needed me to sort out flights etc. I worked out there was an early flight from Edinburgh to Kirkwall, but flights to Papa Westray were booked up, so we still had to find a way to get to the bird. I ended up with one-way flights booked for both of us early next morning (a Thursday) and day return flights on and off Papa Westray on the Saturday as a back-up in case we couldn’t get anything else organised. Then Dan Pointon got in touch about a charter boat from Kirkwall leaving c.0830 next morning – could we make it? Yes, please!

I met Paul at his after a frantic drive back from Cornwall. In the end the logistics went very smoothly – a long but uneventful drive, a routine flight, news the bird was still present (yesss!), taxi to the quay where we met John Coutts (son of Dennis, and the last of the boat party, all others having been on the Edinburgh flight), and a much shorter boat trip than we thought – only just over an hour. Then the trouble started, for me at least.

We hadn’t managed to arrange any transport on Papay, so a long route march across the island beckoned. A quick loo break already meant I was behind most starting out, and it quickly became clear that I was dropping further and further behind. In years gone by I might have shared this fate with Paul C, but the new slimline, fit version was off and away with the rest of them. The final ignominy was being passed in the last few hundred yards by a sprinting Dan P, whose plane had landed a long time after our boat had. I arrived on site at least 10 minutes after the rest of our crew, who had all seen the bird by then. Thankfully it was only a very few more sweaty minutes before I could say the same and drink in the views of the bird. And what a bird! I’d never seen Varied Thrush anywhere before, so it was a world tick, and watching it bounce around its favoured garden in such a stunning location was very special indeed!

After barely an hour of watching it (and getting a single decent digiscoped pic, below), it was time to head back to the quay, as we knew the charter boat was already on its way back with another load of twitchers, headed by Fred Fearn. The walk back was a repeat of the way out, and I was absolutely shattered when I trailed in last back to the quay, legs complaining badly and blisters already formed (I discovered later). That Fred had managed to arrange a lift for all of his boatload on the island, and that several of them passed me waving happily from the back of a pickup, simply rubbed it in. Still, back on dry land in Kirkwall, after a rest and some food, return flights organised (and Saturday’s flights on and off Papay cancelled to free them up for others), and with a few hours to kill, Paul and I could reflect on a very, very happy experience indeed. Bird of the year without a doubt, and already a strong contender for bird of the decade.