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| Common Seal |
Leaving the hotel we hopped the Hoppa to Terminal Two at Heathrow for our morning flight to the northern Scottish city of Aberdeen. Here we would start our Scotland tour.
We were met by our guide John Poyner, who is a birder / naturalist / scientist based in the Scottish Highlands. And fortunately for me he is also a driver! So for the first time since leaving Oz I can kick back, look around and be a passenger. Happy bloody days!
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| enroute to the estuary - our guide John in the lead |
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| John's conga line continuing across the Scottish estuary |
We began birding straight away with a visit to a nearby estuary which was happily crowded with Common Eider. These are tremendous birds and it was wonderful to see them in such numbers.
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| Common Eider - male |
There was a surprise though. In among the Common Eiders there was lurking or sleeping as it turned out another Eider – a male King Eider. This bird, possibly the only wild King eider in the British Isles had been christened, Elvis. [Elvis the King – get it?] Needless to say but I will say it – Elvis was the Bird of the Day!
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| Elvis - first view |
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| Next view |
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| Elvis the King Eider taking some steps |
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| King Eider - clearly a waterfowl unlike any other |
In some ways it was sad that Elvis appeared even though he was a massive Bimbo [lifer] because it took some appeal away from the Common Eider which is a wonderful waterfowl in its own right. We also saw a mass of other common estuary birds; Cormorant, Black-headed, Herring, Lesser and GReater Black-backed Gull and another new bird Common or Mew Gull. There were Common and Sandwich Terns. Mallard and Shelduck and Mute Swans. Redshank and Curlew.
Common Seals and Grey Seals were numerous too in the no-doubt frigid waters.
Among the Mute Swan was another unexpected species a super [duper] Whooper Swan. We only had very distant views but we counted ourselves lucky to see what is normally a winter visitor.
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