Three More For The List

Friday there were howling gales, Saturday there was snow, today it was calm, misty and decidedly damp.  Three days and nearly every sort of weather you could think of.

Today I went in search of an Iceland Gull.  There had been reports of one in Fraserburgh but with no details about exactly where it was.  There has also been reports of Iceland Gulls in Aberdeen at Girdleness and Donmouth.  So I decided to go to Peterhead.  My thinking was if they were North and South of Europe's biggest fish port they must be in the port itself.

Driving down the A90 to Peterhead I saw that there were large flocks of Pink-footed Geese in the fields.  Normally I would have stopped to see if there were any other types of geese with them but the lack of visibility and damp conditions meant that to o so would not have been safe.  Who knows what I missed!

Looking for Gulls in Peterhead means looking in three key places.  The first I stopped at was the Ugie estuary by the golf course, its the first of the three you get to.  All the usual gulls were there.  In order of size:-

              Great Black Backed Gull

Herring Gull

                Common Gull                                                                   Black-headed Gull

  In case you are getting confused the Black-headed Gull has a white head with that black ear smudge in the winter.  In the summer it has a brown head, but it looks black from a distance.  Although we are in the middle of winter some Black-headed Gulls are already developing their summer plumage.  These two were on the Ugie estuary today.

There were Redshanks, Mallards, one Lapwing and surprisingly no Mute swans.  The bridge over the river to the golf course is a favourite place for the people of the town to feed the Gulls, Ducks and much more often than not the Swans.

So I went on the the next stop along Gadle Braes and Skene Street these look out over the North Sea.  Today you couldn't sea very far out to sea so I made do with the shore birds at Buchanhaven, Turnstones, Purple Sandpipers and Redshank.

The third place is the harbour itself.  There were very few birds about.  Perhaps because it was Sunday and the fish market wasn't open and no boats were landing the catch.  Perhaps it was because I was there in the afternoon.  There was a Guillemot swimming about among the plastic bottles - first year tick of the day.

Guillemot in winter plumage

Then just to see I went out to the Lido to see if there was anything in the bay.  Alas the visibility was too bad to know.  Just so you know what it was like here is a picture I took of an Oil Supply Ship.  Can you see it?

By this time the light was begining to fade but on the way out of the town I went to the golf club car park for another look at the Ugie estuary.  Its a good job I did.  What was turning out to be a 'day of disapointment' turned into 'mission accomplished'.   There on the other side of the river with the roosting Common and Black-headed Gulls was the Iceland Gull I had gone to find.

As a bit of a bonus there was the third year list tick of the day a Greylag Goose as well

So I took a really bad photo of it.

Total on List 98