White-winged scoter, Fisherrow, Musselburgh

Photo: American white-winged scoter (left)
with velvet scoter, Fisherrow, Musselburgh.

Wow what a bird! My photos may not show it but the American white-winged scoter at Musselburgh is just magnificent. On my way home from working in Scotland today I called in at Fisherrow harbour near Musselburgh for my fourth attempt to see this bird since it turned up here almost exactly three years ago. Just four days before the first covid lockdown in March last year I was here and convinced myself that I had seen it but on reviewing the sighting recently I decided to remove it from my list because there was too much doubt in my mind.

 

Unfortunately the bird has been very hit and miss this winter, it's been seen for a day or two but then gone missing for a week. However it had been seen two days ago and though it subsequently wasn't reported yesterday when the weather was pretty awful, I decided that it had to be worth a look today with a much improved forecast and seeing as I was in the area anyway. One of the problems when hoping to see a long staying rarity is that you can never be sure how many people are still looking for it or if every sighting is being reported, and often these birds just seem to fade away with less and less reports. 

I started off at at Joppa just west of Musselburgh because that's where the bird had last been seen and where it seems to have been reported most often this winter. However I soon gave up here because most of the velvet scoter were away to my right and were slightly against the light on this bright sunny day, so I decided that Fisherrow would be a better bet.

I walked out to the mouth of the harbour at Fisherrow and started to scan from there. It was bitterly cold in the brisk northerly wind which also made the scope shake quite a bit, but at least the light was perfect. 

I've said before that for a west coast inland birder who is used to seeing velvet scoter either in grotty  1st winter plumage on a local reservoir or as dots miles away out to sea off the North Wales coast it's just a joy to see them so close at Musselburgh, where you can easily see the males yellow bills and the white patch behind the eye. Of course views like this are pretty vital when trying to see an American white-winged scoter for which the subtleties of bill shape and colour are key to the identification.

I was alone and at first it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, there were small groups of scoter scattered across the sea and many of them too far out for me to have any chance of picking out the star bird. Fortunately one group of about 30 velvets was a good bit closer than the rest and I decided to trust to luck and concentrate on these. Even now it wasn't easy, my hands were like blocks of ice, the wind was shaking the scope and the birds kept disappearing for periods in the swell or frustratingly kept diving before I could get a good look at them. Miraculously I spotted it straight away, a brute of a scoter, large headed and bull necked with a large white tick behind the eye, surely that was the bird, but then it was gone, all of the flock had dived. A minute later they popped up a little to the right but then dived again before I could get a good look at any. I wasn't completely convinced at this stage but I'd seen enough to make me forget the more distant birds and concentrate on this flock. 

Over the next hour or so a pattern emerged. I'd spend 10 minutes looking through the flock without success and begin to think that I'd imagined it but then suddenly the large bird would reappear and take my breath away before disappearing again, just giving me enough of a view to keep my attention on this flock. I was pretty confident it was the white-winged scoter but wanted a better look to be certain.

Eventually the wind dropped, the swell seemed a little less and the birds stayed on the surface for a few minutes and finally I got decent views of what was clearly the American white-winged scoter. Now I could see the large bill which gave it a large headed almost eider like appearance as opposed to the concave bills of the velvet scoter, and the large white tick behind the eye seemed to emphasis the large head. Also I could see that bill was pinkish rather than yellow, and that the colour didn't go as far back on the lower part of the bill. All of this gave the bird a very different jizz to the velvet scoters and this is what had drawn my attention to the bird right from my first sighting. 

There were other birds to keep me interested as well, the occasional long-tailed duck, red-throated diver or scaup swam past, and I was delighted to see my first Sandwich tern of the year plunging into the sea, but now I was getting seriously cold in my exposed spot. I'd have liked to have stayed a bit longer to see if the birds came closer with the tide, but it was now a case of survival. I headed back to the car, had a my lunch and a flask of coffee and then headed home, very content with what I had experienced. Musselburgh had produced the goods again!