April 9th

I walked from Cambo back to Crail along the coast path and then heading inland at Wormiston Farm this morning. I was hoping that the sand martins were back at their colony on the shore there. No sign of them yet but there were chiff-chaffs singing in the woods at Cambo and I had a second swallow passing over my garden in the afternoon, singing away as it headed north.

Today a lot of puffins passed Crail. A steady stream of twos and threes going past out of the Forth, so presumably heading further north. Usually it’s all razorbills and guillemots until much later in the summer when the puffins from the May start feeding their chicks, but today it was all puffins with only the occasional razorbill.

The buzzards have been busy over Crail this afternoon. They were displaying to each other (a zig-zagging sky dance), soaring together and mewing loudly, much to the annoyance of the herring gulls which filled the sky noisily every time there was buzzard nearby. At one point I had three buzzards over my garden – perhaps that was why they were so active today – the resident Denburn pair were seeing off a persistent intruder.

A common buzzard mewing – any large bird of prey soaring over Crail will be a buzzard. We have at least three pairs within 2 km of the kirk