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| This is NOT what you want at Fife Ness! |
I remained in Fife for the Bank Holiday Monday, part of a three day plan to cash in on a seabird bonanza. The opening salvo, as described here, had gone really rather well, and whilst I spent the Sunday birding locally in mid Fife and just pottering around the house, on Monday I was chomping at the bit again. The weather had other ideas. I had popped into Fife Ness in the morning to find it totally dead - clear and sunny weather, barely a breath of wind. Half an hour was all I gave it before concluding that there was nothing to be gained by hanging around. I had a pootle around Kilminning, a Wheatear and late-ish Swift my reward, before deciding that Largo Bay was in fact the place to be.
I was not wrong, it was superb. As ever I placed myself on Ruddon's Point which allows you to scope both the expanse of Largo Bay as well as the beach. It was low tide and carpeted in Waders and Gulls - nothing special but I picked out a few Bar-tailed Godwit and enjoyed the Sanderling. The water was almost but not quite like glass, with Auks everywhere and large rafts of Eider. It was shirt sleeves weather and supremely pleasant even if there were no stand out birds, it's still a little early for the Divers and Grebes. Away from the water the best bird was a Treecreeper and a site tick, hanging out in the belt of pines on the way to the point. I went home for lunch a happy man.
As good as the Bridled Tern and Cory's Shearwater were, they were both found by other birders. Of course I do not mind riding on the coat tails of others one little bit, but I don't deny that when it comes to seawatching it is intensely satisfying to work it out for yourself. So in the afternoon I went down to Pettycur Harbour, a very good spot for seawatching in the Fife. It is approximately opposite Leith (indeed you can scope the Royal Yacht Britannia) and juts out towards the island of Inchkeith exactly where the Forth narrows. You're low to the water down at the harbour, but the views out are to where birds feed are excellent, and often you find birds come around the corner between Inchkeith and the viewing spot before heading back out, affording good and close views if you are lucky. The previous days had seen Cory's Shearwater, lots of Skuas, and a Sabine's Gull.
I set up the scope in the lower car park and started scanning, initially hard work in the bright sunshine, but the weather decided to do me a favour and as the afternoon passed the light got better and better. The first Skua I saw was a Bonxie headed east and out, passing in front of the island and disappearing around the point. I never saw it again, but interest soon returned in the form of two pale phase Arctic Skua that came around the corner ridiculously close in and then gave a great show chasing (together) and unfortunate Common Tern that happened to be be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Common Terns are remarkably agile, but so are Skuas, it's just extraordinary to watch. A short while after this a nice gingery juvenile Pom pitched up in exactly the same space. It didn't chase anything at this point, just cruised leisurely around. I don't have a vast amount of experience with this species, but I get better each time, and when it flew directly away I got a real sense of the bulkiness of the body that the Arctic Skuas hadn't shown at all.
By this time the channel had become much busier with a massive flock of Gannets, Gulls and Terns swirling around to the west of Inchkeith. Feeding was constant, and of course in came the Skuas. They were impossible to keep track of - at one stage I got to eight Arctics, including three pale phase birds that I presumed two of were the same as I'd seen earlier. There could have been more than this though, as birds kept wheeling off and either coming closer to me - including the two pale phase birds that stuck together and at one stage pitched down on the water - or heading further out into the Forth where I lost them. The Pom I spotted only once in the fray but it was extremely busy and it could have been there the whole time. This activity probably continued for well over an hour, but then came a conundrum. In the melee a smaller Skua stood out, not only for it's size versus a Tern versus an Arctic Skua versus a Tern (too many versus?), but because of it's flight action and habit of almost hovering on high held fast-beating wings before dipping onto the water briefly. Dainty. In short it felt more like a Tern but was clearly a Skua - a pale belly contrasting with greyish uppers and a very pale head. I only saw it chase other birds perhaps twice, and there were none of the sustained and dogged acrobatics of the Arctic Skuas. Was this a Long-tailed Skua? Everything about it felt different, how I wished that there had been someone competent there to verify it. I made notes as best I could in order to try and work it out later.
And later on I did indeed get some help. The following day another birder reported a juvenile Long-tailed Skua from the same spot and so I got in touch to hear about his experience of this bird and described my own. It sounded good. Later that day I then did some internet research - videos of LTS are very limited as it happens - as well as 'phoned a friend'. Piecing together all of these things has left me feeling quite confident, though whether I have enough to get this accepted I have no idea. I'll try though. All of which means that in my mind at least this was a four Skua seawatch. I've done this before down at Pendeen many years ago, but I expect back then I was put onto most of the birds and so by myself at Pettycur last Monday just felt better and more satisfying. No Sab's or Great Shearwaters, they'll have to wait for another time, but my weekend looking at the sea had been nothing short of amazing.
