Thursday 2 October 2014

Scotland, September 2014, Musselburgh Day 2

Large flocks of roosting waders greeted me this morning: bar-tailed godwit, oystercatchers, curlew and redshank.  Among these were smaller numbers of dunlin and knot and on the edge of the water busily feeding were good numbers of snipe, although sadly no sign of the jacksnipe or whimbrel of last night.  A few heron stood as motionless sentinels as they waited patiently for a food morsel to pass by.
Back for breakfast and then it was off down the coast. First stop, Port Seton harbour, always a favourite spot.  A real working fishing harbour on this stretch of coast and often a good spot for eider taking shelter in stormy weather.  We moved on from here to Longniddry Bents for some more birding.  Usually a good spot, this, and I have photographed curlew here at high tide using the car as a hide. Today we enjoyed watching gannets plunge diving off shore with oystercatchers, redshank, curlew and cormorants on the tideline. 
At Aberlady we added shelduck, lapwing and knot to this total but the plum species were the pinkfeet numbering in their thousands.  There were also a small group of barnacle geese.  It was one of those spine tingling moments to listen to their wild cries as they moved from shore to feeding grounds inland and to imagine the vast distances they had flown from their breeding grounds in Greenland and Iceland.
We had an excellent walk in the fantastic weather from the carpark, over the footbridge and across the reserve to Gullane point via the expanse of the wild and beautiful beach.  At the point were five red breasted mergansers and good numbers of eider offshore as well as oystercatcher, turnstone, not and rock pipit on the rocks.

Yet another excellent day but sadly the weather is set to change tomorrow; still Edinburgh and a day of galleries and coffee shops calls!!


Beer o’clock!!

To view large, please click on an image.
Curlew
Redshank
Heron
Heron
Snipe
Snipe
Snipe
Snipe
Redshank
Sea Glass
Sea Glass
Sea Glass
Sea Glass
Aberlady Bay
Aberlady
Aberlady
Aberlady Bay

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