Trip reports

Local outing report

Sunday, 24 August 2008

Our first outing of the season was to Musselburgh, always a good place to watch out for early returning waders and sea duck. About 15 members met by the sea wall, to find the tide just beginning to ebb, with many of the birds just beginning to fly back from their high water roosts. Large numbers of Oystercatchers flew in from the east, along with Curlews and a few Bar-tailed Godwits. We spotted an immature Kittiwake, its black bill and half-collar clearly separating it from the Black-headed Gulls with which it was consorting. Moving on, a Reed Bunting slipped quietly into the bushes on the landward side, and later we were to see several Skylarks over the grassy banks. A departing Wheatear was seen jumping on and off the sea wall. At sea were a good number of Velvet Scoters, their white wing patches not always visible but with their obvious facial and bill markings confirming their identity, and further around were a number of Great Crested Grebes.

We moved on to the scrapes, dividing up amongst the three hides. The water levels were high, as was the surrounding vegetation, and a number of the smaller waders were quite difficult to spot. But there were several Dunlins feeding energetically among many Lapwings, a couple of Common Sandpipers were still present before beginning their long journeys south to Africa, and a single Golden Plover occasionally, and rather tantalisingly, popped its head up above the vegetation. A few Snipe skulked around the edges and briefly emerged to give good views, and a couple of Grey Partridges were seen in the distance.

It has to be said that the day was somewhat marred, on returning to the estuary, by now at low tide, by the sight of an apparently ownerless dog running amok in the river and on the sands, giving chase to all the swans, gulls and waders, a performance it kept up tirelessly for a couple of hours. It was quite unbiddable, and we eventually had to leave the problem in the hands of SSPCA.