Rare Siberian visitor seen on remote island

One of the rarest birds to land in the UK has turned up on Britain’s remotest inhabited island.

The stunning adult male Siberian rubythroat is normally found near the Ural mountains.

It had only been sighted 13 times before in the UK, and most of those have been in Shetland.

Now it has been recorded on Fair Isle, where it turned up on Sunday. It has not been seen since, though.

Fair Isle is situated halfway between the Shetland and Orkney islands, and has a population of just 55.

A female Siberian rubythroat – less colourful than the male – landed on Bressay four years ago.

This sparked an invasion of scores of twitchers.

When a male rubythroat was spotted on Shetland at Gulberwick in 2011 more than 100 birders also travelled to the isles.

A team from the British Trust for Ornithology were on nearby Fair Isle at the time and chartered a plane to join the crowds.

Previous sightings had been of females or juveniles, which do not have the distinctive scarlet patch on their throat.

The bird should be migrating from Siberia to warmer climes in south-east Asia, but has headed in the opposite direction and ended up in Shetland.

The last recorded sighting of the species in the UK was in 2016, again in Shetland.

A Siberian rubythroat was seen on Fair Isle.