Musselburgh 5&6 Oct

A visit to D#1 and husband in SE Edinburgh to see grandchild #2 for the first time. A couple of chances to nip out to nearby Musselburgh.

I've been here before. So I'm getting a routine together. On the 5th I parked at Leavenhall links and made my way to the old lagoons. Almost deserted apart from a juvenile Ruff. Then as I walked down to the sea wall a skein of geese came over. Pink-feet are a feature of Norfolk at this time of years, so I put the bins on half expecting it to be them on their way south, but no! White bellies! Black necks with white face patches! 31 Barnacle Geese! A subsequent chat with a local indicated that locally this is nothing to get worked up about, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a genuine wild flock on migration, assuming that's what they were. 

Down to the sea wall and I got the scope up. It's a Kowa TSN-1 with 32x eye-piece that I keep at D#1's  house. It was state of the art in the 1980s but is a museum piece now. Looking through it is hard work; the focus is only sharp over a narrow range of depth so you have to work the focus wheel a lot and concentrate hard, whereas looking through my Kowa 883 is, well, its like looking but much closer. 

It was blowing a gale. Distant Eiders, many Red-Breasted Mergansers, auks, and a decent number of this year's Gannets, but for variety I could only find a couple of Red-Throated Divers. And then a brown bird shot through the scope, and getting my bins on it revealed it as a female Merlin heading over from Fife, which went over the sea wall and into the country park. Very welcome.

I called it a day, but found myself back here the next day. Straight to the coast in calmer conditions, and a distant flock of gulls. I spent easily half an hour going through these and amongst the Black-Headed Gulls found Little Gulls thinly spread throughout the flock, eventually settling on a conservative total of 33. There were a mixture of adults and juveniles, and I got excited by a gull with contrasting brownish forewings and white secondaries. After the event I was kicking myself for not giving this a better grilling, but then I have to remind myself I was looking at a distance of half a mile through the bottom of a pint glass. ID'ing Little Gulls was hard enough. Just let it go DD.

On to the new lagoons and it was alive with wildfowl. The lagoons are reasonably close to the path so great scope views were had. Wigeon in tens possibly 100+, Shoveler, Greylag Geese, and a flock of about 35 Barnacle Geese on the lagoons (I had been told about these) and amongst them all a few Pink-Footed Geese and a female Goosander. 

So that was it. A terrific place to watch birds with a range of habitat. I will be back.