Looking at the forecast for North East Scotland it was apparent that Sunday was far better then Saturday and as such a far better option for attempting a twitch that I knew would be very difficult. I had studied photographs on the net and read up a bit about the bird but I knew that this might very well end in a big dip !
I left Glasgow in a steady drizzle, but by the time I had reached Stirling, the skies had cleared and the sun had come out. Winds were light and the bird had been seen early morning so things looked promising.
By just after 11am I was at Blackdog and started to head towards the beach for the 1.5 mile walk down the coast to Murcar. I got a shout from another birder who told me that the Murcar Links Golf Course were letting birders use their car park and that was far closer to the bird. Whoever you were, thanks for that, you saved me a long walk. Sure enough there was no problem in the car park at Murcar Links and indeed the golfers appeared genuinely interested in all the 'excitement' and were keen to show the birders the best way through the golf course to the sea.
Once at the sea there was a very large black mass of over 1,000 Scoter, mostly Common with a few Velvet offshore. Distant dots would have been a good description but as the tide advanced, they gradually began to come a bit closer. After about an hour and despite many eyes looking, 'The Scoter' was not being found. As well as being distant, there was much tooing & froing within the flock and in truth it was like looking for a very small needle in a very large haystack ! Spirits were raised by a fairly obvious drake Surf Scoter and a single Arctic Skua chasing the Terns also relieved the monotony of looking at black dots.
By early afternoon, the light was better and the main flock of Scoter were now slightly closer, certainly enough to see bill colour. There were now about 50 birders concentrated together scrutinising the main flock. From time to time there were murmurings of a possible sighting but these all quickly came to nothing. It was good however to see up to 3 Surf Scoter present in the flock. Just after 3pm a very confident shout went up. Everyone was directed to the left hand side of the flock and soon several birders had got on to the bird and sounded equally enthusiastic about the claim. I quickly got on to an interesting looking bird that to me had obvious pink in the bill. One of the birders was very helpfully doing a running commentary. "It's facing left", "just behind 2 Drake Eiders", "Its preening" "just coming up to a Red Throated Diver". Reassuringly, this commentary was coinciding exactly to what I was looking at. Given the distance and the sea swell I was struggling to get any impression of head shape. For me, the thin line of pink on the bill remained its best feature. It was viewable for about 5 minutes before losing itself in the main flock.
It would have been good to see it closer, but by 3:45pm the light was starting to deteriorate as rain approached from the West.
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