October 27th

It’s starting to feel like autumn might have slipped away. There will be a little bit of easterly on Monday and Tuesday with some rain, but it is getting late. But perhaps not too late for a firecrest or even an eastern wheatear species. Today the northerly wind made it feel raw out at Fife Ness. I sea watched for an hour in the early morning squinting into the glare. There was some passage of ducks – regular small flocks of long-tailed ducks, velvet and common scoters, wigeon and teal and a single goldeneye and red-breasted merganser. One red throated diver going south and a great northern diver heading north. The auks and kittiwakes were passing a long way out and there were no fulmars at all. The main show was out of sight I should think. At Balcomie Beach there was a big mat of newly washed in kelp and a large number of gulls feeding around it. The wind was strong enough that the black-headed gulls, and even a few herring gulls, were kiting over the seaweed in the surf like petrels – literally walking on the water with their wings outstretched.

Herring gull