With Saturday morning the final Goosewatch of the season (the geese are still around- but now the big numbers have moved through that was the last of the organised watches) it's back to the regular task of trying to get our year list up to 200 species or more for the year. With the jury still out on whether we can count the short-staying White Tailed Eagle (we think yes, Dominic thinks no, we've reminded him that he doesn't work here any more) we still need another two or three species to hit our total.
With that in mind I went out to do a seawatch this morning. There are still a few seabirds- Little Auk being a prime candidate- that we can usually tick off but haven't quite connected with this year and the mix of relatively flat sea and onshore wind seemed pretty encouraging. While there were several larger auks -mostly Razorbills- passing by, the first highlight of the day was a small group of Red-Throated Divers just offshore in a mix of near-summer red-throated plumage and grey and white winter plumage. Further out was a much larger, darker black and white looking diver. We're used to seeing the big Great Northern Diver offshore, but this one had a very distictive upturned pale bill- the only real candidate was White Billed Diver. This would be the second record of White-Billed for the reserve, although it's probably under recorded and it's a bird I've never seen before (despite a brief diversion via a Stepping Up For Nature roadshow to try and see one on the Moray coast earlier this year). A quick text or two to Dominic (yes, I know, but it's habit!) helped to confirm the ID. The bird showed for about ten minutes, disappeared and then reappeared further out around twenty minutes later. In between sightings one Great Northern showed as well, which was a good chance to compare the two.
Almost as unusual as the Diver, although already on the year list was a small flock of seven Velvet Scoter flying past. These distinctive dark ducks with a bright white wing-patch are usually annual offshore but normally only as single birds in flocks of Common Scoter so this was a great bonus sighting.
With lots of good birds in the area- including a Firecrest at Rattray on Saturday, we'll definitely be trying for that 200th species again this week...