best part of the day: a close scrape

22-10-26 Weather's set decent, better go somewhere! Musselburgh lagoons have been on the radar for a while but I never get that much from the new hides and scrapes so don't visit often. Today kinda backed that suspicion up. It was enjoyable but no high tariff species, pics or fantastic creatures seen. Plenty nice.

oyster catcher

I nearly cycled, as the bike is in good shape at the moment having been cleaned and tweaked recently. Put new pedals and toeclips on as the last ones were a hundred years old, greaseless and clicky with furry toeclip bands. Accident waiting to happen. Mary bought herself new pedals a while back and we struggled to get her old ones off. She bought a longer pedal wrench and amazingly it did the job - a little more leverage was enough to release the reluctant spindle bolt. How the fans cheered! I thought it was going to be a trip to the bike shop for sure or severely skinned knuckles. I was so impressed I copied her (after she bought me another pair of the same pedals she had found online) and now have swish new pedals and clips.

However at the last moment I opted for a bus. I didn't want to cycle and then have to push my bike about or prop it up while taking photos. (If only I had known how few photos were to be taken.) Easier in some ways to get a bus to Musselburgh, then get a few miles walking round unencumbered, then bus home.

Before setting off, I googled buses to Musselburgh from Abbeyhill and it said the 124 to North Berwick was due in 4 minutes. Hmmm. I grabbed my backpack (camera inside) and dashed out the door. I knew there was no way I could run laden to the bus stop which is 0.78miles away up Easter Road in four minutes. However I have never known the 124 to be on time even though the stop is 10 minutes out the station.

When I was 120 yards from the stop I was overtaken by the 124 and also the next one to Tranent (which would probably do as well.) I increased from a jog to a full tilt sprint and ran behind both which were slowed by the lights or in a queue of traffic before the stop, where a passenger was getting on. I arrived breathless and with 1.7 seconds to spare. There is something very satisfying about catching what for a moment seems impossible. I celebrated by going upstairs where it was empty, and taking off my jacket and jumper to let the t-shirt steam dry while I rode triumphantly along to the lagoons.

brown eye suggests this is a juv

I got off the bus at the bridge over the Esk and walked down the East side. There were a few oyster catchers and they have these fantasic eyes - bright staring red - so they look more mad the closer you get. Always worth a photo in the sunshine even with mud all over their carrot beaks.

there were also loads of canada geese
though I am not very captivated by them

and a couple of wagtails that I do like a lot - great wee birds
but they evaded me by miles, flying over the other side of the Esk.

Dan - back from the dead

Then I saw Dan, or rather I think he saw me first. He was on a (very swish, off-road) Brompton folding bike, his latest pride and joy. He recently turned 60 and I think had been having a bit of a (psychological?) clear out and possibly re-assessing life. Turning 60 can do that. I remember it felt to me like I was turning a corner. An old and decrepit corner that sounded terribly ancient compared to 50something. However that was 4 years ago and I got used to it pretty quickly and the last few birthdays have passed without anything like that trauma. And I do love a bus pass! (Not looking forward to 70 though.)

It was great to see Dan. Not only looking very chipper, but I'd had a question for him and had been waiting to bump into him at the Botanics or along Canonmills where he would loiter for water rails or kingfishers. Then no sign of him for months. Not sure where he spent the Summer (migration?) but Ken and Hugh also thought he had gone AWOL and asked, when they eventually met him, had he died?

Anyway the question I eventually got to put to him was, was Dan short for anything? He said it was shortened from Daneilo. Which was the answer I hoped. And confirmed that Mary had known him in a past life in the mid eighties at Stirling University. I think (after a few recent conversations about water rails and kingfishers) both had half recognised each other as potential distant members of that clan of students but hadn't got round to confirming they were the reincarnations of students they used to know.

Lots of chat about bikes and Ember buses and getting older and being retired and we could have easily spent the rest of the afternoon comparing notes and chewing the fat, maybe going to a cafe... but there were birds to be looked at. He had finsihed looking, I was yet to start. I waved him off - I think a car might have been parked locally into which the folding bike was going. His new backpack was jammed full of telescope and maybe camera equipment. We also talked about back packs and camera equipment. He was considering some interesting new Olympus possibilities and I hope he goes for it as the difference in modern cameras is astonishing. Anyway, very nice to know he isn't dead!

On my way to the first of the new hides I saw a woman in a wheelchair with pals and several dogs, most off the lead. She said I was a little too late and missed all the fun they just had, when one of their dogs got through the gate and ran amok through the birds sending them all into the air, it was hilarious.

I walked past thinking I bet the birds and the birders didn't enjoy it quite so much. It made me realise the complete ignorance of some people and their approach to wildlife. That this woman didn't think anything of her dog behaving in an aggressive manner towards the birds in a bird reserve, other than it was hilarious. I don't think she was even being deliberately spiteful, she was just enoying her fun. A pox on her and her poorly controlled mutts. I mentally wished the birds a longer more productive life than herself.

greylags, swans, curlews, teal, wigeon, ruff(?) and dunlin(?)

redshank

teal (m) moulting

female teal

wigeon

mainly oyster catchers

pheasant (f)

little egret

I don't get terribly excited about distant duckies. Great to see large numbers of them here and the place is becoming busier. Occasionally I hear of interesting and notable migrants. But didn't see any today (would struggle to recognise anything exotic unless it was pointed out) and most kept their distance. That and the long-ish cycle from home to Musselburgh is why I'm not here more often, nice as it is. I'm more intersted in the periphery birds like stonechats and wheatears. None of which I saw today. And I can't even be bothered to commit to memory the ones like ruff and dunlins and other medium to smallish waders that come and go.

ruby tiger moth caterpillar

This delightful caterpillar was hurrying across my path. I video-ed it scurrying by and even getting blown off its feet by a gust of wind.

I then came across this kestrel which was very near and then very far off in a few seconds. It is much more the sort of thing I'd happily chase across the flat windy landscape, although it was gone so comprehensively after just one turn overhead, there was no point.

kestrel

At some point I went over to the old scrapes - the ponds furthest East and the 2 hides that look onto them. Nothing much there either, a good collection of distant wigeon and 3 or 4 shelducks with passing trade but the fierce wind howling through the iceberg cold concrete seats and windows did not incline one to linger. (I arrived home red-faced not from the sun but from the wind blast.)

mostly wigeon

shelducks

goldfinch

black-headed gull on the boating pond

looking back towards Leith

teal (m)

heron

teal in sunshine

When the sun comes out the difference is apparent - you get hardly any sense of the colours of these birds until the sun illuminates their plumage.

vole

On my way back to the Esk Mouth I caught up with David K. He had noticed a vole running down the tarmac towards him, maybe spooked by a weasel which looked out from a clump of turf roadside, possibly watching its dinner run off. The vole was understandably alarmed and sat dug into a clump of grass hoping we weren't having a look and a photo. I offered to relocate the vole out of harm's way but David reckoned it might be too freaked out or bite. So I left him to it. He got some footage of the weasel on his phone but no better photo of the back of a vole than this one here.

crow

important information

jackdaw eaking out a fatball

And so I finish as I started - with sunlit oyster catchers, trying to get a decent shot of a red eye. The birds were a little closer than they were comfortable with, only having a short stretch of grass between the river and path. A bit skittish as I went past, tending to sprint a little one way or the other. I think they realised I was not a serious predator but kept their beady eyes on me just in case.