Finally we called in to see Angus The Invincible Caddy Lamb who was just chilling with his mates
Angus and friends 27 06 21 by Paul Macklam, on Flickr
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Whimbrel survey number two today. Here is the area covered -
Normally this would be a āwellies onlyā walk but the ultra dry conditions, combined with the ever present winds here have reduced the ground to something you could walk on in carpet slippers.
Started at the (laughingly named) āroadā to the airfield and covered everything to the East in 150m strips.
View from the start, looking SE
WS 01 28 06 21 by Paul Macklam, on Flickr
Climbing steadily North towards the water treatment building, a pair of breeding Arctic Skuas were sat on a mound in front of it (you have to look closely!)
WS 04 28 06 21 by Paul Macklam, on Flickr
Then moving East I was attacked by a pair of Bonxies (Great Skuas) as I was obviously close to their nest. Only one actually made contact. To put their proximity into some perspective, this was taken with an 18mm lens!
WS 03 28 06 21 by Paul Macklam, on Flickr
Further North I came to Skutes Water - the source of our drinking water. There were two pairs of Red-throated Divers on here, one pair had two chicks in tow!
WS 05 28 06 21 by Paul Macklam, on Flickr
Still canāt believe how dry the streams are
WS 06 28 06 21 by Paul Macklam, on Flickr
There were another 50 or so Bonxies at the North end of Skutes, bathing in the fresh water
WS 08 28 06 21 by Paul Macklam, on Flickr
The main stream that feeds Feal Burn was at the lowest level Iāve ever seen it.
WS 07 28 06 21 by Paul Macklam, on Flickr
Round Skutes and back up to the airfield, at last a few pairs of Whimbrel were calling and occasionally flying around me trying to defend their territory
The airfield is covered in daisies, this is the view North with Vord Hill (highest point on Fetlar) in the background
WS 10 28 06 21 by Paul Macklam, on Flickr
And now to the South with the sea beyond
WS 11 28 06 21 by Paul Macklam, on Flickr
Still have a smaller section of the survey to complete in the next day or two but at least I recorded 4 pairs of whimbrel. Theyāre not having their best year!
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Jet stream is staying stubbornly south of former-usual track - your streams dry-up, and hereā¦ the rain it raineth every day (or seems like it).
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Some light rain on Saturday but not much. Last day of substantial rain was 3rd week of May.
Not good for the breeding waders 
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I can well believe it. Whole damned planet is out of whack 
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Itās fucked mate. Saw an article today about pearsā¦
Grown in Argentine, packaged in Thailand and sold in British supermarkets. WTF?
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Fucking madness - mankind is a virus with shoesā¦
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Weāll all be gone soon (relatively) and the planet will, most likely, repair itself.
Once human intervention ceases it seems well placed to make a comeback. Just look at Chernobyl. The habitat and wildlife have made a remarkable recovery.
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The supply chain for chicken is even more byzantine, all to save a pennies on tax
There is a real sense of freedom that comes across in these images Paul.
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Sheer greed paulā¦just sheer greed by the people who already have everything.
no seasonal fruit or veg anymore
Indeed, we should all be able to eat raspberries in January and Asparagus in December.
The worldās food system is twisted way out of what we might think of as its ānaturalā shape. But Iām old enough to remember when if you wanted any fruit other than apples, oranges and bananas for more than half the year youād have to open a jar of jam or a bag of raisins. And by April your spuds were pretty old and tired. I donāt miss it.
And there are, as Marcus Rashford keeps pointing out, still people here who struggle to afford even ācheapā supermarket food 
.
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Thereās clearly a balance to be had between food security and minimising carbon footprint, and this is one that we donāt have in the right place at that moment.
Iām always reminded of a study I saw years ago. There is a huge correlation between wealth and carbon footprint, at both national and individual level. If people (or countries) have surplus wealth, they spend it, and this increases carbon footprints. The only way to genuinely reduce our impact on the environment is to be less wealthy. And not many would vote for that.
I like to think that we could be wiser with our choices about what we consume, choosing more local where possible. But we need a huge change in the distribution of wealth, both nationally and globally, before this is really likely.
Equally if you are a poor country and have a resource that people want you are going to sell it, even if that means chopping down rain forests to do it.
The EU policy of paying farmers not to farm needs worldwide adoption, but we donāt do foreign aid anymore which means short sighted policies will come back to bite us in all sorts of ways.
At a local level (by which I mean just, say, the UK) would we also have to be less populous ? Is it even theoretically possible for a UK population of 66 million to be self-sufficient in food, and would we all have to be veggie and on 2300 calories a day to achieve that ? And how much of the landscape could we leave un-tilled ?
So youāre thinking of shrinking world food production ?
Shrinking non-essential production maybe.
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That is what it would take, I fear. But I wouldnāt want to be responsible, in a democracy, for defining āessentialā.
Gandhi was 1.65m tall and weighed under 50kg.
He was undoubtedly offset in the averages
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Did I mention itās been dry?
April
DSC03092 1 by Paul Macklam, on Flickr
June
Feal 29 06 21 by Paul Macklam, on Flickr
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