It never gets completely dark in Shetland in June, although there are a few hours of ‘simmer dim’ twilight in the middle of the night. After enjoying Orkney so much, we had always planned to visit the Shetland Isles one day and this was the year that we finally made it:

We caught the train from Dover, getting up to London in good time to board the 9.15pm Caledonian sleeper train to Aberdeen. We didn’t get much sleep on the train, but arrived at 7.30am the next morning to spend a day seeing the sights in Aberdeen. Dave had once lived there for five years when he worked on the oil rigs as a geologist for BP. In the late afternoon, we boarded the Hjaltland NorthLink ferry for a comfortable overnight crossing up to Shetland when we caught up on our missed sleep.

The Shetland Isles lie roughly a hundred miles north of the coast of mainland Scotland and there are also about a hundred islands, although only sixteen of them are inhabited.

We were joining a Naturetrek holiday as part of a group of fourteen of us together with two guides. We were all very keen to see what wildlife this most northerly outpost of the British Isles had to offer.

We were staying at the friendly and historic Busta House Hotel near Brae, two thirds of the way up Mainland Shetland. Parts of the building date back to the 16th century:

The hotel had over two hundred whiskies to be tried, some shockingly expensive:

We have always found Naturetrek holidays to be pretty full-on but this one was perhaps even more so. Over the week we toured widely over many of the islands, but a combination of having to rejig plans because of poor weather and some troublesome ferry timetables meant that we were sometimes leaving the hotel quite early in the morning and not arriving back until fairly late. These were often long days of nature watching indeed, but what a lot we saw.

There are several Shetland specialities that I particularly wanted to spot. The Shetland bee is very large and is an absolute corker:

There is also the Shetland wren, Troglodytes troglodytes zetlandicus. This is a separate subspecies of the mainland British wren:

This lovely little wren is endemic to the Shetland archipelago, although the most southerly island, Fair Isle, has its own endemic subspecies of wren. It is darker than the mainland UK bird with heavier barring, a stouter and longer beak and stronger legs:

The oyster plant, Mertensia maritima, is a rare plant that can be found on the north coast of Scotland as well as on Orkney and Shetland. It grows at the top of the beach, just reachable by the high tide.

Its flower buds start off pink but turn blue as they open:

There are, of course, also Shetland ponies everywhere on the islands:

Some of the islands are connected by bridges, but many still rely on ferries as their link to the rest of Shetland.

On one long day we caught a ferry to Whalsay and then another to reach the furthest east remote group of islands, the Out Skerries. The Linga ferry took us to Whalsay and the very powerful Filla, on the right below, took us on to the Out Skerries:

Only thirty-five people now live on the Out Skerries, although the number was double that not so very long ago.

A system of lined channels brings water down off the hills and into a reservoir as part of the water supply for the island:

The islands were very remote and undisturbed and we were hoping for lots of otters. But in the event we only saw this one which disappointingly quickly disappeared under the water:

Wherever we went in Shetland there were fulmars nesting on the cliffs:

This one was nesting in an abandoned ravens nest:

We did see lots of grey seals over the course of the week. On the Out Skerries we also saw a harbour seal hauled out on an old salmon farm enclosure:

A pair of summer plumage dunlin, with their dark belly patches, down at the island’s reservoir for a drink:

There were often sanderling to be seen on the islands, racing in and out with the waves:

And a lot of ringed plover too:

On another day we travelled down to the very south of Mainland Shetland to Sumburgh Head:

The many puffins on the headland were the big attraction:

We saw several birds collecting grass to line their burrows:

But no food was being brought in, so presumably the chicks were yet to hatch. There was a bit of fighting going on though:

There is speculation that puffin numbers have increased recently because so many skuas have been killed by the terrible H5N1 strain of avian flu that has wiped out countless millions of wild birds throughout the world since 2020.

I spent much time frustrating myself by trying to get acceptable photos of puffins in flight:

I did finally manage to get some in focus.

It was difficult to stop photographing the delightful puffins, but there were other birds there as well:

We visited the historical site of Jarlshof where the ruins from multiple eras of habitation all co-exist on the same site. Houses from the Bronze Age 2,500 years ago, through Iron Age, Pictish, Viking times and right up to the 17th century are all there.

Wherever we went on the islands, there was evidence that parent birds were busy rearing their families at this time of year:

One day we joined a twitch of a black-winged pratincole, a bird way out of its normal area. The hardcore birders were getting very excited but we just felt sad for it. We did however see other noteworthy birds which were happily getting on with things in the right place. Red throated divers, on the left below, breed in the freshwater lochs on the islands. Great northern divers on the right below do not breed in Shetland but non-breeding birds are frequently seen there in the summer:

Red-backed shrike was once a widespread breeding bird in Britain up until the 1990s when changing agricultural practices had so affected their large invertebrate prey that we unfortunately lost them. They are still occasional visitors though:

Red-necked phalarope are beautiful teeny weeny waders that are very special and rare breeding birds in the UK. The Shetland island of Fetlar is its main stronghold in the UK and they fly up there from coastal Peru to breed:

Shetland has the highest density of otters in Europe and there are estimated to be up to a thousand there. They are Eurasian otters but, having been isolated for so long, the Shetland otters have become slightly smaller than elsewhere, often with pale markings on their throat. We saw this pair of youngsters whilst we were eating our sandwiches on the beach at Lunna Ness. The otter on the right has caught a fish:

And we saw this dog otter at the Fetler ferry terminal as we were waiting for the boat back to Yell:

One of the highlights of the trip was a night visit to the island of Mousa. Sixty of us packed aboard a boat that left Mainland Shetland at 10.30pm:

The island of Mousa is free from rats and other ground predators which enables 15,000 pairs of storm petrels to nest there in cavities amongst the dry stone walls, building ruins and rocks at the top of the beaches. This represents 40% of the UK’s storm petrel population breeding on this one small island. Five hundred of the pairs are thought to nest in the ancient Broch of Mousa. This 2,500 year old broch is the tallest and most complete broch still standing:

European storm petrels are small – just a little bigger than a sparrow – and spend most of their lives out at sea but come back in the summer to remote Scottish islands to raise one chick per pair

One of the pair takes its turn to incubate the eggs whilst the other goes out to sea for two to three days to feed before returning in the dark to relieve its partner. The other bird then goes out to feed. Once the chicks have hatched, the feeding visits might be a bit shorter but the absent parent always comes back in the dark to avoid predators such as gulls and skuas.

As we stood by the broch, with our head torches on red light only to avoid damaging the birds eyes, they started to return en masse around midnight. It was something that was very difficult to photograph and perhaps it was better to simply relax and experience the amazing wildlife spectacle. This is the best image – a screenshot from a video – that I can show you and you are just going to have to visit it yourselves to properly appreciate the wonder of it!

We got back to the hotel at 2am that night, at the end of an extremely long but successful day.

On the final morning before we were dropped back at the ferry port in the afternoon, we visited the beautiful sand tombolo that connects St Ninian’s Isle to Mainland Shetland:

The waters were crystal clear and teaming with life:

Unfortunately there was a major hiccup on the journey back to Kent. The overnight ferry from Shetland was due to dock at Aberdeen at 7am. However, we arrived to find Aberdeen port closed due to thick coastal fog. Whilst the rest of the UK experienced a heat wave, the super heated air rolled off the land and hit the cold waters of the North Sea forming fog with no wind to move it on. The ferry had to wait a mile offshore for the next eight hours for the fog to clear and the port to reopen. By that time we had long ago missed our train south, and had to spend an unforeseen night in an Aberdeen hotel before catching a train down to London and onwards to home the next day.

We had really enjoyed our week on Shetland and felt that we had had a thoroughly good look at it. For me the Shetland bee, the red phalarope and the storm petrels were the highlights. Dave also includes paddling in the waters around the tombolo, the puffins at Sumburgh Head and being surrounded by breeding wheatears in the list of his special things.