Sat urday 31 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •
National^27
Libby Brooks
Scotland correspondent
Shetland has elected its fi rst female
parliamentarian, with the Liberal
Democrats holding on to the Scottish
parliament constituency.
The hard-fought byelection
included a high-profile campaign
from the Scottish National party, dur-
ing which the fi rst minister, Nicola
Sturgeon, visited the islands three
times in a month.
Beatrice Wishart was elected as the
MSP for the area, with 5,659 votes,
but the Lib Dems had their major-
ity more than halved from 4,895 in
2016, with the SNP candidate Tom
Wills benefi t ing from a 14.4% swing
and the independent candidate Ryan
Thomson , a local councillor, also pick-
ing up votes.
The by election was prompted by the
resignation of Tavish Scott , a former
leader of the Scottish Lib Dems, who
had held the seat since the creation
of the Scottish parliament in 1999. In
July, he announced that he was leav-
ing politics to work for Scottish Rugby.
With 11,835 votes cast, the turnout
was 66.5%, up from 62% in the 2016
Scottish parliament election.
Sturgeon’s trips to Shetland during
the campaign attracted criticism from
opposition candidates, who said she
had never visited the islands as fi rst
minister outside an election campaign.
Wishart said she was honoured “to
make a little bit of history by becom-
ing the fi rst female parliamentarian in
Shetland”, after what she described as
a roller coaster campaign.
She said: “Shetland has once again
rejected Scottish nationalism and
shown that it has not been taken in
by the bullying tactics.”
Wills said that the SNP had taken
Shetland from being Scotland’s safest
seat to one of the SNP’s top targets in- “We’ve achieved our best ever
result in Shetland and the increase in
our vote is hugely encouraging. After
12 years in government, we have given
the Lib Dems a run for their money in
what was the safest seat in Scotland.”
The polling expert John Curtice said
that beating the Lib Dem s in their Shet-
land stronghold “was always going to
be a tall order” for the nationalists.
Although Shetland voted 56.5%
in favour of remain during the EU
referendum, lower than the 62%
across Scotland as a whole, Curtice
said he believed that wider issues
such as Brexit would not have played
a signifi cant role in the contest.
He told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good
Morning Scotland programme: “The
high turnout shows this was a fi ercely
local context.
“This is a part of the world where
all politics is local and the Lib Dems
are able to say: ‘We are the party that
stands up for the interests of Shetland
in Holyrood .’”
Lib Dems fi ght off SNP
to retain Shetland seat
in Scottish parliament
Patrick BarkhamHundreds of twitchers have fl ocked to
Cornwall to seek what could be one of
the fi rst UK sightings of a brown booby.
The large, yellow-footed seabird is
usually found fi shing in tropical waters
on the far side of the Atlantic, around
the Caribbean and the west coast of
Central America.
A local birder reported seeing a
suspected brown booby while he
was relaxing with his family on the
beach at St Ives on Monday. The bird
was then photographed on Tuesday
by Keith Jennings, a birdwatcher
and electrician who travelled from
Gloucestershire to fi nd it.
The bird surprised twitchers byloiter ing around the beaches of north
Cornwall for fi ve days, fi shing close to
the surf at Hayle on Thursday.
Mark Grantham , the chair of
the Cornwall Bird Watching and
Preservation Society , said: “These
really rare seabirds do turn up but
they are quite tantalising – so often
they drift by and are seen for a couple
of minutes and then they are gone. The
fact that this bird has hung around is
going to draw a lot of people.”
Hundreds of birders gathered
around St Ives Bay to catch a glimpse
of – and photograph – the bird. But it
was proving elusive yesterday, leaving
many birders disappointed.
James Lowen , a nature writer
and wildlife guide, drove 425 milesovernight with two friends to try to
spot the bird, gathering on the dunes
before dawn to train their telescopes
on the sea.
“It’s never been seen in Britain
before and rarity is always exciting,”
he said. “I’ve seen it in the Caribbean
20 years ago but seeing it over this side
of the Atlantic would be a real red-
letter day. We’re having a lovely time
sunbathing in the Cornish sunshine
and there is that lure of pasties, but
some birders are rather disconsolately
packing up and leaving. ”
While rare North American warblers
blown to Britain are likely to die with-
out returning home, the brown booby
stands a fair chance of fi nding its way
back , according to Grantham. “It is lost
but it is completely in its element ,” he
said. “ Seabirds can fi sh as they travel
and east-west journeys are easier to
manage than north-south. It is still in
the right ocean .”
The Cornish brown booby’s status
as potentially the fi rst seen in the UK
may be disputed, however, because
since its sighting other bird watchers
have described seeing what they
suspected may have been another
brown booby fl ying off the coast of
Kent earlier this month.Birders fl ock to
spot what may
be UK’s fi rst
brown booby
▼ A brown booby hitches a ride on a
sea turtle off the coast of El Salvador
in its usual Central American range
PHOTOGRAPH: JOS É CABEZAS/AFP/GETTY‘Shetland has once
again rejected
Scottish nationalism
and shown that it has
not been taken in by
the bullying tactics’Beatrice Wishart
Lib Dem MSP
for Shetland
hart
P
▲ The brown booby photographed by
Keith Jennings near St Ives, CornwallRELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws