Western Sandpiper – Musselburgh Lagoons, Musselburgh, East Lothian, 20^th August 1997

On returning from our trip (sorry, honeymoon) to California, on Monday the 11th August 1997, I was re-united with my pager when Graham (Gillian’s brother) collected us from Manchester Airport. Later that day (I assume) the pager informed me that there was a Semi-palmated Sandpiper at Musselburgh. Interesting I thought, but no more. Despite our jet-lag Gilly and I made our way back to Queensferry later that day, but it wasn’t until the following evening that we attempted to see it. Or at least we planned to, after collecting Gilly’s car from her workplace at nearby Craigmillar. Unfortunately, her car wouldn’t start, and so by the time it did it was too late to go to Musselburgh. Gilly had offered me the opportunity to go on my own whilst she sorted out her car, but (as I was to discover) as the bird was tidal it was not certain that I would have seen it on that occasion, and anyway it was ‘just’ a Semi-p.

By then I had received a calling to return to work in Audley, Staffordshire. This I did on Wednesday the 13th August. Having already travelled to Scotland on the Monday, I was disinclined to travel back on the Friday, and so instead I stayed in Burnley. During the course of the weekend the message on the pager gradually changed, initially unnoticed by me.

The Semi-palmated Sandpiper was undergoing an identity crisis, and so the messages relating to it began to read Semi-palmated / Western Sandpiper. It now it became apparent why Jim Steele had indicated that Ian Andrews had been happy with the identification, as there had obviously been an element of doubt for some while.

As I was unaware at the time, it would seem that a photograph of the bird at Musselburgh was shown to Killian Mullarney at the Bird Fair, without putting it in context. He apparently immediately stated that the bird was a Western Sandpiper!!!! As a result, the bird obviously had the potential (at least), to be a very, very good tick, rather than just a very good Lothian / Scotland one. The pressure was on.

On Monday the 18th August I returned to work in Staffordshire, but as the bird proved to be still around, I changed my plans progressively, carrying out various site visits that day rather than the following one, as I had planned originally. On my return to Audley, I was retained for longer than I had intended, and eventually set off back to Scotland at 17:00, so arriving back in Edinburgh at 21:00, too late to do much about the bird.

By ‘coincidence’ the following day, the 19th August, I had the luck to go to Haddington to see my very good pipeline project colleague Nick Smith, calling at Fisherrow that morning and then to Musselburgh itself that afternoon. Here there were other birders, including such glitterati as Lee Evans and Dick Filby. Lee demanded to know whether I had seen the bird, and was perplexed to find that I hadn’t despite, living in Edinburgh.

I explained that currently I was working in Staffordshire and that I had stayed down south over the weekend whilst the identity crisis occurred. I compounded the disbelief Lee experienced by telling him that I had just come back from California, where we had seen hundreds of Western Sandpipers, including some within a couple of metres in Monterey Aquarium. He wanted to know how I had identified these birds and what plumage they were in, and so he was less than satisfied when I told him that we had not really got to grips with them beyond falling into the American trap of saying they were ‘peeps’, and that they just ‘were’ Westerns.

Anyway, despite lots of good chat and some serious searching by good national and local birders, over the course of several hours, nothing was seen of the bird that day. There was some dark murmuring about Steve Gantlett and Richard Millington having been kicking the bird all over the Fisherrow beach on the previous evening obviously being the reason why it hadn’t turned up that night.

The following day Gilly was on a course until 15:00 and as the high-tide wasn’t until about 16:30, I realised that there wouldn’t be any news until at least this time, so despite Gilly’s alternative suggestions, I decided we should wait until there was some news.

This we did despite Gilly ‘phoning from work to ask whether I would be meeting her in Edinburgh, prior to going to Musselburgh. I declined and so Gilly returned home, partly as we had received our long-awaited honeymoon holiday photographs in that morning’s post. So it was that we were looking through the photographs when the pager informed us that the ‘Western’ Sandpiper was at Musselburgh again, apparently at mouth of the Esk as the tide closed in. Looking at the wedding photographs was promptly suspended and 40 minutes later we were at Musselburgh.

The tide was now well in so we quickly made our way up onto the lagoon. I was more than pleased to see several birders next to a car on the embankment overlooking the assembled wader roost. I assumed that they had it staked out, and that a tick was imminent!

We quickly joined them and I was even more pleased to see a couple of familiar faces as we settled down alongside them. However, they indicated that they had a ‘strange’ tern, which very soon became a probable hybrid Sandwich x Lesser Crested Tern. This was all very well and good, but where was the sandpiper sp.? I made a tentative inquiry as to its whereabouts, only to be told that they hadn’t seen it since they had been watching it about an hour earlier at the Esk mouth, but they cheerily suggested that they would find it for me!

I was gratified by this but doubted their optimism, particularly as others and I had really worked for it during much of the roost the previous afternoon. However, we scanned the roost with no success, but literally within minutes of our arrival a group of twelve or so small waders suddenly flew in from behind us. One of our group indicated that ‘it’ was with them, but all I could see was Ringed Plover. Then, once they had pitched in it was again suggested that the ‘peep’ was amongst them, but it was a 1st winter Sanderling, or at least that was all I could see. Our informant then again said it was there. Finally, though, I did manage to pick it out from amongst the Ringed Plover. Despite only having her binoculars Gilly was quickly onto it as well.

We watched it from our initial vantage point for a while, and then I returned to the car to get my notebook, camera, books etc.. As I walked back I had 14 Whimbrel overhead, but surprisingly the others missed them. This prompted two of them to go to the wader scrape in search of them. As a result they found that the ‘peep’ was less obscured from further along. We therefore moved along as well, and were soon joined by two of the birders I had met on the previous day.

The bird remained on view throughout the next two hours during which time good views were obtained at what was a reasonable range in good light, although frequently it was at least partially obscured. My views of it were helped by loans of various ‘scopes through which I got better still views, so that I was able to study the bird well, and to sketch it well as part of the process.

The bird was watched in what was a relaxed atmosphere, similar to the Collared Flycatcher perhaps. Again there was lots of good chat, but this didn’t distract from the study of this contentious bird, in fact it added to it.

It was an obvious ‘peep’ for which the miniature Dunlin analogy really worked, particularly if it was applied to an adult of one of the long-billed races in winter plumage. It was watched roosting amongst Ringed Plover and Dunlin in runnel depressions in the fly-ash near the lagoon, often partially obscured as a result; as it was sleeping or often standing on one leg whilst roosting, it was difficult to gain any really useful impression of jizz.

However, the field sketch made during the initial part of the period during which it was watched is a reasonable likeness of the bird. The bill appeared long and tapered to a fine point, and also seemed slightly decurved, adding to the Dunlin (alpina) analogy. The crown was slightly darker than the rest of the upperparts and was finely streaked with dark lines. There was a distinct whitish supercilium that joined the base of the bill in front of the eye and then broadened towards the eye, and beyond, where it terminated in a square-end whilst still broad. Above the eye itself the supercilium was partially broken by dark streaking, which was similar to the crown. There was an eye-stripe of similar dark streaking running from the base of the bill to the ear-coverts. The rest of the head was light brownish grey. The upperparts were light brownish grey with little marking, although the coverts had darker centres. The underparts were white, although there was an epaulette of darker fine streaking on the breast sides. Due to the wind direction and the direction from which the bird watched the front of the breast was not seen so any fine streaking was not observed. The legs appeared to be black, and although they were reasonably long, they did not give the bird the tottering appearance of the birds seen in Monterey Aquarium.

After this close-ish examination had ended the bird departed just as suddenly as it has arrived, again in the company of Ringed Plover and Dunlin. We followed to the other side of the Esk but never caught up with it again. Following my attempts at grilling this enigma, and after referring to all my references I certainly leaned towards it being a long-billed Semi-palmated Sandpiper, on the basis of the following criteria:

Further, the bird was reminiscent of the adult winter Semi-palmated Sandpiper I saw at Sidlesham Ferry, Sussex in November 1988. I resigned myself to awaiting the judgement of my superiors...... .

The following month Birding World obviously contained an account of the occurrence, complete with the photographs by Gary Bellingham that had allowed Killian Mullarney to suggest the real identity of this bird in the first place.

Although not reaching the same final conclusion following my studies of the bird, I was still very pleased with what I had picked up on in my description. Therefore, I have not altered history by changing my original account, as is detailed here. Given the views I had of a roosting bird I stand by my description. Obviously the jizz and bill were real clinchers in terms of my views, whilst the light apparently affected the colour tone of the upperparts (a mute point at the best of times) and I was too far away (or the bird hadn’t been cooperative enough) to get views of the upper breast streaking.

And anyway, hadn’t the author of the article in Birding World told Jim Steele that it was definitely a Semi-palmated Sandpiper at the beginning of the saga? He didn’t mention this in his article, unlike some.

I had really enjoyed the whole saga. It was all very instructive and productive, especially as it all took place in the environs of Edinburgh.

 With the benefit of photographs (or superb views) it obviously was a Western, and not a Semi-p, for which I was very grateful.

Western Sandpiper, Musselburgh lagoons, Musselburgh, East Lothian, July 1997 (photograph credited to Iain Leach).

 Collared Flycatcher – Ethie Mains, near Arbroath, Angus, 31^st May 1997

Having not enjoyed May 1997 (quite as much as I might have done if I had been able to twitch the Calandra Lark and / or the Common Yellowthroat), this came as a blessed relief.

Two weekends prior to this I was in South Queensferry as my father and his long-term partner Barbara were visiting Gillian and I. The weather was dire and restricted our sightseeing activities, and also, otherwise, if they hadn’t been visiting, as I was working in Staffordshire, I could have stayed in Lancashire and so twitched the Isle of Man for the Calandra Lark, or even travelled to Scotland, Shetland and Unst for the Common Yellowthroat. And to make things worse, when Dad and Barbara had departed, and the weather cleared, Gilly and I had dipped Marsh Sandpiper and Red-rumped Swallow in East Lothian.

Then the weekend prior to this I had time on my hands, but during a Spring Bank Holiday weekend when I had deliberately placed myself in England, there was nothing to go for! Aargh!

So, I returned to South Queensferry on the night of the 29th May with some misgivings, not helped by nominally dipping Pied-billed Grebe on the journey north. Sods’ Law dictated that there would be something really good in England during the course of the following few days.

However, on the Saturday afternoon it became apparent that Sods’ Law was not operative that weekend, as a few hours after Gilly had left me to go down to her parents in Lancashire, and just as I was getting down to some work, the mega-alert went off for the fifth, (and last!), time in May to announce the presence of a Collared Flycatcher some 10 km north-east of Arbroath in Angus at Ethie Mains.

It was 13:53. Within five minutes I was on my way. The trip was good, apart from my visit to the service station at the start of the trip and problems with navigating to Ethie Mains using a road atlas at the end.

Once there it was not apparent where I should park, or even whether I should park, as there was no real sign of a twitch.

I plumped to park anyway, and fortunately I was able to ask the farmers’ wife, “Where is the rare bird?” She pointed me in the right direction, and I was then able to join a very small group some 200 m down a track. I quickly recognised Stuart Green, who it turned out was the finder of the bird, and then also located the bird as it flitted amongst the foliage of, primarily, one large elm. It was about 15:30, and as one of the very first arrivals, for the next two hours I enjoyed the bird and the company.

Having seen it so readily, I was able to relax and make the most of what then became a very sedate, gentile and polite twitch with a very few Scottish and a very few Anglo-Scottish birders, such as Calum Scott, et al..

The bird showed at ranges of about 30 m, intermittently, and even when it was showing it was not always easy to see amongst the confusing background of tree trunks, branches and leaves. When it did show and I got it in the ‘scope it was stunning, and I was easily able to pick up most of the diagnostic features, the striking white collar, largish white forehead patch, the large white patches at the base of the primaries, pale-ish white-grey rump and lack of white in the tail. I also noted the brownish primaries, primary coverts, etc., indicative of a first summer bird, as may have been the smudgy grey markings on the otherwise white underparts. Otherwise, it was a typical Pied-type flycatcher in every respect. Also heard snatches of song, or perhaps sub-song, and saw interaction with an arboreal Pied Wagtail!!

A stunning bird, all in all.

Collared Flycatcher, Ethie Mains, near Arbroath, Angus, May 1997 (photograph credited to Alan Tate).

Bufflehead –Colwick Country Park, Colwick, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, 18^th March 1994

March 1994 Bufflehead, so long ago it's in black and white, and the March 2024 version, which isn't.

Twice within a week I was rewarded with a good (if, at the time what was considered to be potentially dubious!) tick in a country park. Again, though, as with the Black-faced Bunting, for me at least, my scruples allowed, and it - Bufflehead - was on my list.

News was first relayed on the pager on Thursday the 17th March 1994. I had just returned from a Premier-Transco team-building event in Hinckley, having flown from Edinburgh to Birmingham on Tuesday the 15th March and from Birmingham to Edinburgh on the 17th. As alcohol had been involved I was in no fit state to do anything but recuperate that day. However, so it was that, after visiting Nick Smith in Haddington for work-related reasons, I continued south on the A1 and beyond on Friday the 18th March.

The journey south was largely uneventful, if long, particularly as once in Nottingham, despite my intuition which took me around the ring-road to the football and cricket grounds and the national water-sports centre, I was thwarted by the lack of directions. Anyway, after almost an hour of travelling around trying to find the scene I finally made it there. Much frustration....!

By the time I finally reached the country park and the car-park where birders where parked, it was late in the afternoon, and worse, it had started to drizzle. Some 25 birders were assembled nearby, beyond the landscape planting around the car-park, and they were watching the bird on the lake. It was feeding near an island with Goldeneye and was at about 200 m range.

It was a really smart little duck; constantly diving and, as such, with the continually worsening rain the views weren’t the best. It was a small diving duck, owing a lot to Goldeneye with which it associated. It was a wonderfully attractive pattern of black and white; the crown, lores, forehead, throat, necksides, mantle, back and tail were all black and the rest was white. The bill was grey and the legs were flesh-pink.

Coincidentally, almost 30 years to the day later, one turned up at Carbeth Loch, near Milngavie, on the 19th March 2024. As such, this was reasonably 'available' and, as such, of interest to me in relation to my Scottish list. As my UK list had passed 500 some while ago, and as my Scottish list now approached 400, the latter was of increasing importance to me. When I had first come to Scotland more than 40 years earlier, I wasn't particularly interested in good birds which were available in Scotland if I had already seen them elsewhere in the UK. This was now longer the case.

Anyway, news of the 'available' Bufflehead broke after 18:00 in the 19th March (too late to go). For whatever reason I didn't go the following day, which proved to be a good decision, as it had disappeared.

The following Sunday, the 24th March, I drove from home in South Queensferry to Castle Stuart outside Inverness, where I was working on the second golf course project there, 20 years after I had been involved with the first one. As I arrived that evening, news broke that the (yep, the same one) Bufflehead had been relocated on Sand Loch, near Collieston in Aberdeenshire.

When, early the following morning, Monday the 25th March, RBA reported it was still there, I WhatsApped my birding friend in Ullapool, Andy Williams, and asked whether he was 'Buffleheading'. He responded saying he was at Alturlie (2 km from where I was) waiting for Bob McMillan to arrive from Skye before the two of them continued on to Collieston to twitch the bird. Andy subsequently offered me a lift, but by then I was busy at work. He 'phoned me at 09:00 to reiterate his offer, and I explained I couldn't get away from work as I had pre-arranged meetings, etc., but that I was hopeful it would stick, as on the Thursday I had already made plans to drive home from Inverness to see eldest daughter Ellen and her boyfriend Shane in Aberdeen.

Unfortunately, the Bufflehead hadn't read the memo, and again had disappeared when looked for early on Wednesday 27th March, so I was thwarted again. I did have a forlorn look around nearby sites on the afternoon of Thursday 28th before going to see Ellen and Shane, but to no avail.

Having had a good night with them that evening, I left Aberdeen on the morning of Friday the 19th and drove towards South Queensferry.

I opted to call in at the Loch Leven RSPB reserve (formerly known as Vane Farm) en route, in the hope of some early summer migrants, or a scarce duck.... . Little did I know. Once there, for whatever reason, I opted to visit the three hides in reverse order to my norm, starting with the furthest away, before returning to the largest, and closest to the loch itself, rather than the pools.

Here there was one other birder, who turned out to be young George Dunbar, whom I had never previously met, although before he had an accident whilst ringing at Tay reed-beds and fractured his knee-cap, had been meant to be part of my party staying at the Low Light in early autumn 2023. Subsequently, George had, I knew, become the bird recorder for Perth and Kinross; Loch Leven was, in every sense 'his' patch.

It was excellent to finally catch up with him, and we had a great conversation about all sorts of common aspects of our birding worlds. Whilst we did so, we scanned the viewable parts of the loch for anything of note; George commented that he was hopeful of a Little Gull (given the time of year and the heavy showers) or even just a Scaup, and we both hoped for our first Sand Martin.

Despite our combined efforts we failed to produce anything, and had to confine ourselves to rescuing two stunned Chaffinches after they had smacked into the large windows of the hide with a terrific bang.

On leaving and returning to our cars via the visitor centre we reported this incident to one of the RSPB wardens (after first looking at the recent sightings on a whiteboard). As we approached him to tell him about the Chaffinches he said, "Is there anything wrong?" which at the time struck me as a rather odd comment, as if we had been looking for something else on the whiteboard.

Subsequently, George and I said our goodbyes. He messaged me early that evening saying it had been good to finally meet and casually suggesting we'd gone to the wrong loch (as Ken Shaw had had two Little Gulls at Kilconquhar Loch).

I responded somewhat later that evening, and within 30 minutes he had forwarded a tweet saying, "This is so annoying".

The tweet was from a Stuart Milligan, who had tweeted George (as the recorder) at 15:17 that afternoon to say, "Hi George. Pretty sure the Bufflehead has popped up on Loch Leven, east of the RSPB centre. Apologies if old news". For whatever reason George hadn't received the tweet and as such, despite scanning virtually the same area of the loch (the bird was seen from just a few hundred metres away) we were oblivious.

George subsequently also forwarded an e-mail from Stuart Milligan (presumably as Stuart was mystified as to why the news hadn't got out) reiterating and enlarging on his sighting. He also suggested he had reported in at the visitor centre and would be sending a description via BirdTrack.

So near and yet so far. George and I had a dialogue about the scenario and George confirmed that the news was now out.

I subsequently sent a message to our Serious Birding Bantering WhatsApp group detailing this unfortunate scenario.

As a consequence, the following morning, I got a WhatsApp message from Ken Shaw saying, "The Bufflehead is showing Loch Leven".

I was there within the hour, and so finally caught up with it. And very good it was too. I missed Ken (who had relocated it - fair play) but caught up with Mark Wilkinson, John Nadin, Dennis and James Morrison, Sandy Morrison, Euan McLauchlan, et al.. What a saga!

Bufflehead, Colwick Country Park, Colwick, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, March 1994 (photograph credited to Alan Clark).

Bufflehead, Colwick Country Park, Colwick, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, March 1994 (photograph credited to unknown).