Noss & Bressay Islands
For our last full day in Shetland, we booked a boat tour of Noss and Bressay Islands. This was recommended by the Lonely Planet guide as well as Alfred's colleague from Shetland, so we figured we should definitely book one. The company we chose offers 3 tours a day, and I decided to book the morning tour so that we'd be done by lunch and then have the second half of the day to do something else. We got on board, and the staff were really friendly. We were with a group of about 10 other people, including some very well-behaved children, and we set sail on a catamaran-type boat promptly at 9:30am. Despite the morning beginning with some drizzle, it stopped very soon once we departed, and at one point, the sun came out almost until the end, when it did start raining again, but we were already back at the harbour by that time. The tour guides give you an earpiece with a small transmitter, and one of the guides gives a presentation throughout the tour, pointing out places and sites of interest along the way in addition to all the information about birds and wildlife.
Bressay Island is the first island you see and the closest one to the main island. As we really started to get going, a huge, brown and cream bird started tailing us. This bird is a great skua, locally called a bonxie (the Scots have great names for things). The guide threw up a couple of pieces of bird food for it, and it was able to catch one in mid-flight. We also found out that they fly faster than the boat was going as the guide mentioned that it would soon overtake us. That was really enjoyable watching such a big bird flying so near. They then took us into one of the caves, though it was dark, and we couldn't see much, and then toward this rock structure colloquially known as the giant's leg. We sailed through it, and around that time, the guide pointed out an A-frame high atop the cliff, which was used to help hoist equipment up and down during WWII. The hoist itself is not there, but the frame still is, and it's very visible from the water.
After that, we went toward Noss Island, and this is not only a beautifully high-cliffed island, but it's also where the northern gannets nest. I had first seen a gannet at Skomer Island last year, and I got a somewhat decent shot, but these birds had eluded me. I even saw tons of them in Portugal, but they were far away and flying so much that I didn't get a chance to get any clear photos of them, at least not close-up shots. There were so many gannets, thousands of them, at this nesting site. And it's not even one of the largest nesting sites in the world for them! But it was beautiful seeing so many there, and there were babies, too. It was so cute to see so many of the babies. We also learned that the parents are overfeeders and that sometimes their babies, when they are old enough to fledge, are actually too heavy to fly, so they have to remain on the rocks below, not getting fed (because they can't do it themselves yet if they're not in the water or able to fly up out of it) to lose weight. The guide at this point throws up some small fish for the birds, and the gannets and skuas scramble a bit for them, but it's mainly to show the gannets diving. They do look like little torpedos in the water--and the water is so clear there that they are easily viewed just beneath the surface, especially with their white feathers. In addition to the skuas and gannets, we saw several shags, most of whom were juveniles, and kittiwakes, though most had flown for the season.
Before circling the rest of Noss Island to go back to the harbour, they stop in a small bay on the island where the warden for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds lives for part of the year. We don't actually go into the house, but we can see it from the boat. But the reason that we stop there is not just to learn about conservation and walking tours of the island, but also to have a spot of tea and biscuits! I will miss this about living in the UK. You can find tea and biscuits almost anywhere. (And they did offer coffee as well.) We also noticed how beautifully light turquoise the water was. This is again the type of tropical-looking water that you expect to see in the Caribbean or Hawaii or other exotic destinations, not in the North Atlantic. But there it was in all its glory. I decided to search for why this is right now, and it may be due to a type of phytoplankton in bloom. Anyway, with the break over, the only stop we made on the way back was when some seals were spotted hauled out on a rock. They obviously wouldn't get too close to them and didn't want to stay too long just for the safety of the seals, for their comfort, but we were able to pause for a few moments, and I was able to get some good photos. These seals are called common seals and also harbour seals because they'll hang out by harbours where the water is a bit shallower, and they are super cute. It's the type of seal I saw by the Textiles Museum, but I didn't know what kind they were at the time.
We continued on, and as the boat was slowing by the harbour, it went toward a place where grey seals are known to be. These seals are larger than common seals, and usually prefer to be farther away from the harbour, but apparently there is another boat tour company that will through lots of food out for them so tourists can get photos and see them up close, so the seals have come to expect this and come up to any boat near it. They were saying they felt this to be unethical. Indeed, it was kind of sad, but I did wonder how that was different from them throwing up fish for the gannets earlier. Well, I did get to see another kind of seal, and I just have to take it at face value.
Overall, we were very impressed with the tour, the information provided, the tea break, and the organisation of everything. Our boat tour at Skomer was nothing like this. We basically just did a bee-line there and back, didn't actually get to go around the island or anything. So we really enjoyed all the scenery and wildlife watching. Still no cetaceans, unfortunately, though!
Scalloway
As I had planned, the boat tour ended by lunch, so we had a snack (the breakfast at our B&B was pretty big so we often didn't need lunch), and then planned for the next item on our agenda. Another work colleague of my husband mentioned a memorial and museum related to the Shetland Bus, an operation set up initially to help Norwegians escape Nazi terror but later used by the Special Operations Executive to run all sorts of other war-related operations that could be concealed in refugee boats. This was all located in a town called Scalloway on the island, so we hopped another bus for the 20-minute journey to Scalloway, thinking it would be a nice outing for the afternoon as there is also a castle ruin there.
The memorial itself was set up to honour those that were lost at sea trying to escape Norway. Unfortunately, we couldn't visit the museum because it was closed, despite being a Saturday afternoon. Scalloway used to be the capital of the island, before Lerwick, but it's really a very sleepy town--except for a number of people dressed up in various costumes headed to the local pub. We weren't sure what was happening there, but there wasn't really a lot going on otherwise. In any case, there's no lack of information about the Shetland bus on the web, and it turns out that the Scalloway Museum itself has a nice write-up with some digital resources, should you wish to learn more.
Other than that, there wasn't much else to do aside from looking around Scalloway Castle. It was also closed, for conservation work--apparently you normally have to pay to get up close to see it, which we likely wouldn't have done anyway because I think we've seen enough castles in Europe at this point--but you could still view it fairly easily as it was built in a very conspicuous spot. It had been owned by the Earl of Orkney, Patrick Stewart, who built it there so it could be viewed from far away and to show off his power. He was apparently quite an obnoxious fellow and disliked by most people. We didn't spend long in this town, given that everything of interest to tourists was closed, so we just hopped a bus back to Lerwick and had a lax remainder of the day. See photos of the boat tour and Scalloway here. I tried to limit my photos as much as possible--there are tons more photos of the gannets, but it's still a fair number of photos!