King of the Highlands

Great find a few days ago in the shape of a stunning drake King Eider 20 miles up the coast from Ullapool. A few local birders have tried to find out who found and first reported the bird but unfortunately this has not been possible to date. The bird shows well when it moves into the near-shore areas with the small flock of eider, but on occasion is distant and it has also been known to disappear in the numerous rocky inlets that are characteristic of much of the coastline in the area. 

Desert campaign

I finally managed a long overdue twitch to Rattray head, Aberdeenshire with Richard Rafe in order to see the Desert wheatear. Leaving the village at 04:00 got us on site to witness a lovely dawn after seeing a very welcome barn owl enroute. On arrival it was a little too dark for active birding, so we had 30 minutes enjoying the sunrise and listening to the calls of pink-footed geese as they flew overhead. With improving light we headed for the dune slack to look for our target bird.

dawn over Rattray head

the 'light in the sea'

After my initial panic at not finding the bird around the dune pool, I decided to walk a couple of hundred metres along the tide line towards Peterhead, whilst Richard checked the dune system. A robin flew from the seaweed into the dunes and in the half light I initially thought it was the wheatear. Retracing my steps, I re-checked the flooded area- again without success, so I continued along the high- tide line past the lighthouse. A few minutes later the wheatear flew from a patch of flotsam- the black tail and white rump patch very distinctive in the morning light. It was good to see the bird actively catching sand flies and looking very at home in its' pseudo desert environment! We enjoyed good views of this very nice bird and it proved to be well worth the travel. 

Later we caught up with a drake King eider on the sea off St. Combs and I also got another dozen or so common species to push the year list up to 74. Another great day in the field.

King eider

Have not seen the sun on the north west coast for 5 or 6 days and the rain has been rather persistent so I felt the need to travel to the east coast to catch up with some sun and a few good birds. Dropped in to pick up Marcus Conway (ebirder) enroute, then headed on to Burghead where the semi- resident king eider has been seen on and off in recent times. I last saw what was presumably the same bird in December 2010 just off the point. On arrival we made a quick check of the inner harbour but the bird was not there on this occasion. Shortly after checking a few flocks of eider from near the point Marcus was quickly on the bird amongst the main flock some 500 metres east of us and just north of the 'maltings'. We quickly relocated and enjoyed some nice views of the bird- although still showing some evidence of his 'eclipse' plumage he is still a cracking bird. Fortunately as the tide was high the bird was within a couple of hundred metres for most of our encounter. (and the sun came out!).

the 'King'

The Moray firth always seems to hold good numbers of birds and we also enjoyed seeing a little auk, common and velvet scoter, long-tailed duck, red-throated divers as well as a few knot, redshank and turnstone.

long-tailed duck

common scoter