Scopoli’s Shearwater – Long Craig Gate Jetty, near South Queensferry, Lothian, 10^th August 2020

Prologue 

Much of 2020 was a strange affair. Certainly, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Common Nighthawk and Eastern Yellow Wagtail type highs of late 2019 were VERY noticeable by their absence.

During March the entire country (er, both Scotland and the UK) was placed in lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which, in terms of rigorous application (and arguably observation), was applied more successfully and lasted much longer in Scotland than it did ‘elsewhere’…… .

For me, what was involved – mainly living in isolation and social distancing (together with improved personal hygiene!) wasn’t too much of an upheaval from the norm. I got on with all those things I never quite got around to, including sorting out the back catalogue of ‘new species accounts’ such as this (or at least as far as writing them all up goes… ). This certainly involved lots of ‘virtual’ birding, exercising the ornithological memory banks……... .

In addition, it also had some negative, and some positive, implications for my actual birding. Trips to the Isle of May in May and to the Hebrides in July were cancelled, as life, and aspirations of 500 were placed on hold. Suspended animation, with not a lot of animation.

However, I also enjoyed some good actual birding, participating in a competitive ‘lockdown house and exercise list’ ‘challenge’. This involved Ken Shaw, Jonny Holiday, Andy Carroll, Chris Pendlebury, John Nadin, Kevin Kelly, et al., using WhatsApp to convey our successes or otherwise as we maintained (and actively pursued!) both house and exercise walk lists during the first weeks and months of lockdown, resulting in me reaching the heady realms of 110 plus species on foot from Minshull Towers, including finding Great White Egret immediately east of the airport, apparently about the 5th for Lothian….. .

I had done very little work since HS2b bird survey work had dried up for me in autumn 2019, apart from some work for Hi-Def (courtesy of Martin Scott). As such, it was, in some very minor ways, a relief to do some work for them again from mid-July onwards, working from home using one of their workstations (as has been intimated might happen in the very early stages of lockdown, when I had briefly worked in their office in Linlithgow, before it was closed, and, eventually, the replacement one in Stockbridge, Edinburgh opened).

Concurrently, I also commenced some 16 or so vantage point surveys in the Queensferry area aimed at proving the presence (or absence!) of Honey Buzzards as part of the national survey being co-ordinated in much of Northern Britain by Chris McInerny and Ken Shaw.

Oh, and having previously failed badly in my mission to purchase somewhere suitable in South Queensferry in which to enjoy my dotage, from a standing start, having viewed a property (identified by Tessa in central Queensferry the preceding weekend) on the evening of Monday the 6th July, by Thursday the 9th July my offer had, unbelievably, been accepted, so I was to be heavily involved with the process of buying one house and selling the other for much of July and August……. .

I did do some other birding though.

Firstly, on the 6th July I was persuaded by David Steel to meet him at John Muir Country Park as he travelled back towards the Isle of May from north-east of England to see the Greater Sand Plover that had been there for a few days….. . Although I didn’t even need it for the site (as I had seen one there with Gillian and a very young Ellen in June 1999) it was very good to see Steely and a good bird.

Secondly, and similarly, on Wednesday the 29th July I indulged in another (very) local twitch, attempting to clean up my Lothian / Scottish Cory’s Shearwater tick (eventually seen – poorly – flying near Inchcolm Island from Hound Point in Dalmeny Estate years ago) by twitching another. This I did eventually see resting on the sea off Dalgety Bay (no thanks to ‘directions’ provided by John Nadin from the Fife side) from Whitehouse Point in Dalmeny Estate – so again very distantly. This was after Kris Gibb very coherently did for Darren Woodhead what John Nadin had attempted, very incoherently, during the course of four or five ‘phone calls between he and Dennis Morrison and he and I whilst we stood on the jetty at Long Craig (poor Dennis Morrison needed it full stop, but had to leave to go to work, in disgust). Darren Woodhead and two of his sons and dog then arrived, and they, Viv Hastie and I had moved from the jetty at Long Craig Gate to Whitehouse Point in the hope that this would make a difference.

….. in the (comparatively insignificant as it turned out) aftermath, I enjoyed some good Twitter banter with Adam Hutt who, amazingly, had managed to see the Cory’s Shearwater off Cramond during his lunchbreak from the new Hi-Def offices in Stockbridge in Edinburgh. By some means he had then scratched away some the dark area at the tip of the underside of the primaries in one of Kris Gibb’s images and posted it on Twitter, suggesting to Kris Gibb he should, “Check out that underwing on your pic!!” I asked him whether he was claiming it…… .

However, despite such fleeting interludes, 2020 had become something of a grind, with some work and little pleasure. As suggested, from mid-July onwards I was involved with doing the Hi-Def identification work using one of their workstations at home during the week, and doing vantage point surveys during the weekend; the pleasure of doing the lockdown exercise walk list had receded as lockdown was relaxed and the birding doldrum days of high summer arrived.

Little did we know what was to follow.
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Act 1

Early on the morning news of Sunday the 9th August Kris Gibb relayed a message on the Birding Lothian WhatsApp group regarding a Great Shearwater which had been seen as it tracked north past various sites along the north-east coast of England.

At 08:53 Kris Gibb relayed another message about a Cory’s Shearwater that John Nadin has seen off Kinghorn Harbour in Fife at 08:50. At 09:36 Mervyn Griffin reported that (Jason McManus and) he had seen the same bird off Hound Point.

Subsequently, there were further such messages; Calum Scott reported it again from Hound Point at 10:36.

However, I was committed to doing a vantage point survey by this time. And anyway, it was ‘just’ a Cory’s Shearwater, and although poorly, I had seen one locally just eleven days earlier… .

As suggested, between 11:50 and 14:50 I was doing a vantage point survey. On this occasion, this was just south of the A90(T) at Burnshot, looking for raptors over Dalmeny Estate. I accessed this by parking near the newly reconstructed and recently reopened Burnshot Bridge at the north-east corner of the former army base accommodation at Craigiehall, and walking through a wheat field to my vantage point location. It was a lovely day (or seemingly so) but there was a strong easterly wind which created a slight haar over Dalmeny Estate and chilled me as I had just a tee-shirt and walking trousers on as I sat in the shade of a large field boundary beech….. .

Whilst I was doing the survey, further messages on the WhatsApp group (Calum Scott at 12:06 and Martin Scott at 13:21) reported the ongoing presence of the Cory’s Shearwater just a couple of miles north-west of where I was sitting, but diligently I didn’t leave my station / vantage point location…… .

By the time I had finished the survey I just wanted to go home to get warm, but messages still continued. At 15:40 Mark Holling suggested it had been moving backwards and forwards off Hound Point during the past five minutes, whilst at 15:41 Calum Scott reported he had seen it going west over towards the Fife side of the firth……. .

Then, at 15:47 Chris McGuigan reported a second Cory’s, and, two minutes later, that both birds were together….. ! I was at home resting by now, but I should have motivated myself, especially when Ian Andrews reported at 17:30 that both birds were off Inchgarvie next to the Forth Bridge (where it would have theoretically been viewable from the garden of my new residence….) and that one had a white flash on its right wing. Very occasional similar messages continued into the early evening.

Much later that evening Chris McGuigan confirmed that ‘Flash’ or ‘Patch’, as the initial bird had rapidly become known due to the extensive patch of damaged(?) white feathers on its right wing, had been reported a month earlier on the 9th July tracking north along the coast of north-east England before being lost at Seaham. Mark Holling asked whether either of the birds involved could have been the individual seen on the 29th July, and I reminded everyone that Steely had seen one tracking out of the Firth of Forth from the Isle of May on the 30th July…….. .

So, I’d missed two Cory’s Shearwaters in the Firth of Forth, but then again, I’d seen one just a couple of weeks earlier, and I’d completed my vantage point survey….. .
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Act 2

The following day, Monday the 10th August, I attempted to continue with my Hi-Def work.

However, this proved a tad difficult as at 11:33 Mike Hodgkin relayed a twitter message on the WhatsApp group indicating that the Cory’s with the white wing patch was again in the Forth east of Queensferry, and at 13:25 Kris Gibb reported ‘Flash’ was on the sea in the Hound Point area.

Therefore, I cracked, and having done at least some work, at 14:43 I posted a message asking whether it was still showing.

At 14:50 Neil Maciver suggested that there was no sign, but that a few people were still looking. However, at 15:04 Dennis Morrison suggested that it was sat on the sea off the Long Craig Gate jetty. At 15:05 I responded that I was, ‘On my way. Ta Dennis. Déjà vu’.

Dennis subsequently sent me a rather stunning image which proved rather motivating, and also to be completely crucial in the whole ensuing affair.
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Act 3

I must have had some sort of a premonition, as I drove from home to Long Craig Gate like a complete looney (90 miles an hour plus at times; I think the car became airborne as I went over the summit of the road alongside Dalmeny Estate before Leuchold Gate).

Anyway, once there, having assembled my gear, I bumped in to Chris McInerny and his daughter. Conveniently, they were watching it from the shelter of the sea cadets building at Long Craig Gate. He gave me good directions, and as he suggested I walked to the end of the jetty (and then followed me to shout even more specific directions) to view from there.

As a result, I saw it resting on the water east of Hopetoun, one of the Hound Point terminal tugs anchored west of the terminal, and then circling around nearby. Briefly, but well, or well enough. Hurray!!!!

Now, I’d like to be able to provide not just a detailed description, but also one which pinned down what subsequently proved to be a very problematic identification issue.

I can’t do that. I can say that I saw (albeit briefly) and superficially what I saw was a Cory’s Shearwater, both when resting on the sea, and when flying over it. It was a large shearwater, with white underparts and greyish-brown upperparts. Like the bird a few weeks before, I noted it seemed to sit low in the water. When flying it just ‘was’ an obvious large shearwater. However, I honestly did note to myself that, compared to the few Cory’s I had seen previously, it looked ‘slight in flight’…….. . Oh, and it had a fuck off big white plumage aberration on its right wing, which proved to be hugely diagnostic….……. 😉 .

Anyway, I contrived to lose it, and so not particularly desperately I continued to scan for it in what was a strangely familiar exercise (hadn’t I been standing on the jetty at Long Craig just a week or so before looking for a Cory’s Shearwater???). Just to add to the déjà vu, John Nadin ‘phoned me from his watchpoint on Carlingnose Point…. .

I was then joined by the Little brothers, soon to be my fellow Queensferry birders.

Necessarily, we chatted all matters Honey Buzzard and / or Ken Shaw, and then continued this conversation when we walked back up the jetty and joined Chris McInerny. It was like a raptor surveyors convention! As if to emphasise the point Chris picked out a Peregrine on the Forth Bridge.

As we were sat chatting beneath the fire escape of the sea cadet hut at Long Craig Gate, I couldn’t help thinking that for me, this was the best place from which to see scarce and rare seabirds, reminiscing about the cracking birding I had enjoyed there with Ken, Mervyn Griffin and Alan Brown years ago.

This continued once I had returned home and resumed work; I’d seen another really good seabird from the jetty at Long Craig Gate, and as such I had finally achieved decent views of Cory’s Shearwater in the Firth of Forth …… .
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Act 4

However, that night, at 21:34 a message from Mike Hodgkin to the Lothian Birding WhatsApp group stated, “So guys and gals, it has been brought to Martin’s attention that ‘Flash’ is almost certainly a Scopoli’s Shearwater NOT a Cory’s!!!! He also posted a series of supporting images taken from the newly published North Atlantic Seabirds book, accompanied by THAT image taken by Dennis Morrison.

WHAT???????????? THE???????????? FUCK????????????

A series of incredulous responses followed.

I pointed out to the group that Adam Hutt had tried to doctor Kris’ photo on Twitter t’other week to demonstrate this sort of underwing pattern as a joke.

Martin Scott suggested that, “Through the evening he’d had lots of feedback on Dennis’s photograph, and that all had voted for Scop”. He also indicated that Paul French had concluded, ‘So worth submitting I would say’.

Dennis Morrison also reported that, “Bob Flood’s caveated assessment on Dennis’s photos I sent him is that it’s a Scopoli’s Shearwater”.

I enjoyed the evening, having a good WhatsApp message exchange with Steely, aka @SteelySeabirder, for instance.

I also re-visited Twitter, and congratulated Adam Hutt on his incredible voodoo predictive skills, skills I was unaware he had when I knew him from Spurn…. .
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Act 5

Given that, technically, I hadn’t seen it in its Scopoli’s Shearwater guise (and admittedly, I had only seen it briefly), I was keen to go for seconds the next day, the 11th August. For some reason I had an even worse night’s sleep than usual, so I got up at 06:00 and was on site by 06:30.

Part of me was very driven to see what was potentially going to be massive a twitch on my doorstep, and I wanted to see just manic it was at Long Craig Gate, where, at the best of times, accessing and parking was tricky.

However, I didn’t see it between 06:30 and 09:00 but I enjoyed the company of Andy Stirrat and we were joined by Martin Scott before he left for work. I was also amused to see twitching glitterati (in particular Steve Gantlett!) there. I mused that I had seen a bird he hadn’t….. . I also had dialogue with Ken who was attempting to catch up with it from the Fife side, predictably…. . We saw very little in terms of birds, although as if to demonstrate COVID-19 had wasted much of the year, a couple of early autumn migrants in the form of a Common Sandpiper and a Whimbrel briefly landed on the jetty in front of us.

However, there was no sign of the shearwater, and partly because I was conscious that Martin Scott had left to go to work for Hi-Def, so did I.

Later though, having done at least some seabird i.d. for Hi-Def, I returned to Long Craig Gate that afternoon, partly as Andy Williams and Al McNee had travelled from Ullapool and Inverness respectively, and I wanted to catch up with them.

They had seen it when I got there, and left after we had chatted, and so I then continued on to Hound Point as Andy and Al had informed me that Ken had relented and crossed to the Lothian side in a desperate bid to catch up with the Scopoli’s Shearwater (him having surveyed Balearic Shearwaters off Porthgwarra for the RSPB, etc., etc.). Hound Point thus proved to be good socially (always fantastic to see Ken) and I was also pleased to see Donald Wilson and David Allen. However, Ken was keeping a very low profile due to the presence of a certain person, and both of us shared a reluctance to engage another occasional twitcher….. .

It was very apparent though, I wasn’t going to see the Scopoli’s Shearwater again that day (wrong times, wrong places) and so eventually I left, hearing Crossbill on the way back, when passing oblivious Johnny come lately birders rushing to Hound Point…… .
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Epilogue

Although people were looking, and although there were further sightings of Cory’s Shearwaters off Hound Point in the next day or so, the Scopoli’s didn’t show again, meaning that only those who had located or twitched it as a Cory’s on the Sunday or the Monday (like me), or, had successfully twitched it as a Scopoli’s on the Tuesday (like Ticker Gantlett), managed to see this ultra-rare seabird.

Amazingly, it was next seen off Mundesley, Norfolk on Saturday the 15th August…. (just what had east coast birders been playing at???).

Despite this, I had a strong suspicion it would remain an ultra-rare seabird (partly as it was a species which would continue to be virtually impossible to identify during a sea-watch from a Cornish headland, or from the deck of the Scillonian). Fate conspired to make this highly recognisable individual identifiable as it lingered in inshore waters over a couple of days (some of the time in the company of a Cory’s, allowing for comparisons to be made) enabling stupendous images to be obtained, and retrospectively used to clinch the i.d.. No, I suspect it could be a real blocker…. .

Anyway, I resumed a more routine pattern of work during the rest of the week, basking in the incredible success of seeing a second or third for the UK and a first for Scotland, just four or so miles from home. My only regret was that, if it had been a few days later, I might have even had it from my new home in Queensferry (just 0.5 mile away!). What a garden tick that would have been!!!!

Part of the basking in the incredible success involved discussing at some length with John Nadin nuances of his task of providing a suitable description; he was the first to see ‘Patch’ and as such Mervyn Griffin was magnanimous enough to say it was John’s bird. It was, on the basis that he had seen it first. John had also, clever boy that he is, got video footage of both birds flying over an extended period, not together, but concurrently. However, given his very palpable qualms, I actively encouraged John to involve ALL of those actively involved; Jason McManus and Mervyn Griffin for also first seeing the bird, Ian Andrews for getting really good images of the two birds together, Dennis Morrison for getting ‘the’ image that allowed re-identification, and Martin Scott (and presumably Adam Hutt) for peddling and pursuing the potential Scopoli’s theory in consultation with various authorities. Oh, and Bob Flood, Killian Mullarney and Paul French for commenting on the bird depicted in Dennis’s image. All in all, I felt both very local to the scene of a stupendous record, and really central (even though I played no part in finding or identifying the bird) to the whole thing, as I know so many of the main players well or very well. Way more so than any other rares, even the one or two that I have been actually involved in finding.

It was all the more gratifying then, that John was commended on his very detailed record submission.

 

An attempt at reproducing the images that accompanied Mike Hodgkin's momentous WhatsApp message… (including the photograph taken by Dennis Morrison). Who needs a written description?

Cory’s (left) and Scopoli’s (right) Shearwaters, off the Forth Bridge, South Queensferry, Lothian, August 2020 (photographs credited to, and montage assembled by, Ian Andrews).

Scopoli’s Shearwater, off the Forth Bridge, South Queensferry, Lothian, August 2020 (photographs credited to, and montage assembled by, Ian Andrews).