Christmas and New Year Birding

The brother was up for the holidays so a fair bit of birding was done.

Central Fife Wetlands Dec 27th.
It was great to see good numbers of wildfowl on the main flood (near Keepers Cottage) at Rossie Bog including 39 Pintail. The water levels vary greatly here and in recent years the area has been largely dry. Here's hoping it stays wet into the spring as historically the site has been excellent for passage waders.

Cameron Reservoir Dec 28th.
Jon hadn't seen an adult drake Smew so we went to Cameron where the long staying drake duly obliged (originally there were 2, ad and Immature drake). Stunning birds although almost as smart were several drake Goosander.

Ruddons Point area New Years Eve.

A nice mix of species including close views of 3 Twite on the saltmarsh by the Cocklemill Burn. Excellent views were also had of 3 woodcock in the car headlights, feeding on the verge by the approach road to the car park at Shell Bay, just before first light. This seems to be a regular winter phenomenon as I've had birds doing the same in previous winters. Jon was less excited about a Little Egret at the Cocklemill Burn as he is based on the Isle of Wight, but this is still an uncommon species in Fife. 

New Years Day

We did  an all day bird race, starting in the Ruddons Point area after being impressed with the mix of species we got on New Years Eve. The area didn't disappoint and we left there just short of 60 species. Highlights were 2 of the 3 Twite from New Years Eve, a repeat performance from Woodcock along the approach road before first light and a Kingfisher on the Cocklemill Burn.

It was different day weather wise to N.Y.E with a blustery SW wind and this probably contributed to the rest of the day being rather hard work in terms of a day list e.g. a lack of farmland birds on a drive up the East Neuk. Things picked up though as we got to central Fife. While adding some welcome wildfowl to the day list such as Gadwall and Whooper Swan at Letham, we noticed an immense flock of gulls circling over the tip near Angle Park. Driving round to the pits we were greeted with the impressive sight of gulls covering the entire water body, easily the most I have seen here.
There was a minimum of 1,500 Herring Gull including my best ever tally of Scandinavian birds (50+  but certainly an underestimate). Many of the Scandi birds  were menacing high arctic birds with dark mantles, long pale bills, striking hoods densest around the eye and large amounts of white in primaries.
I used to go through the gulls a lot more here and despite there always being good numbers present, I never found a white-winger so when another flock of gulls came up from the far side of the pit I was very pleased to spot a brute of a Juv Glaucous Gull with them. It flew towards us but then we lost it in the melee of gulls, although we suspected it had drifted towards the tip.
As for the day list, we had got distracted grilling the gulls so that kind of petered out, but we ended up with a respectable total of 76 species.

There had clearly been a large influx of gulls inland to Angle Park pits and the nearby tip (due to stormy weather over the 'top' of Scotland?) including many good examples of Scandinavian Argentatus. The next day Barry Farquharson went one better and got both the Glaucous and a Juv Iceland Gull.