Last week..
I was away for work in Argyll and Bute. Not that busy for birds but I had a lot of dragonfly activity on one of the calmer warmer days, mainly involving Black Darters with at least 10 seen. I've been to the site before and not noticed them but this is probably down to the fact that their flight period is relatively late in the year peaking in August. This species is common in Scotland where there is plenty of it's favoured habitat available; acidic wetland on bogs and moorland.

This weekend..
Back on the patch at Ferryhills and a good variety of migration activity taking place. The first skuas moving overland were seen on Sat with 13 Bonxie and 4 Arctic Skua watched heading over the Forth Rail Bridge, sometimes skuas will cut off the headland and fly right over my watchpoint but these chose to follow the course of the Forth exactly. The numbers were made up by a big movement of Meadow Pipit with 1,115 in 3.5 hrs on Sat and 1,211 in 3.75 hrs on Sunday. My first single figure count (it had to happen sooner or later) of Tree Pipits since I started the autumn campaign at the end of July on Sat but then they crept up again on Sunday with 16. Amongst a steady trickle of House Martin and Swallow, a single Swift went through on Sat which could well be my last in Fife this year.
A Black-throated Diver on Sunday was a Site first and took me by surprise by coming from overland out to the coast. It's more normal to see divers (Red-throats and small numbers of GN Divers) heading high inland presumably on passage to the west coast. Perhaps this Black-throat was dispersing from a breeding site in W/NW Scotland and using the Forth Valley to reach the E coast?
A few migrants on the deck included a cracking male Redstart that was in the same area of bushes on Sat and Sun.

Cracking Redstart on the patch.

Days when skuas decide to take an overland route along the Firth of Forth are difficult to predict. It would be logical to think for an E coast site that strong NE to E winds are ideal for driving seabirds into the Forth and they are; this is when arrivals of scarcer species such as L T Skua, Sabines Gull etc can take place. However I've often seen overland passage taking place in seemingly less expected conditions- Bonxies, Arctic Skuas flying into a SW to W headwind but with good visibility inland along the Forth Valley. This is what happened on Saturday and i'm thinking it's got to do with birds moving round bad weather. The weather chart for Sat shows a deep low pressure system over Greenland and Iceland, making an exit from the North sea a less favourable option while relatively calm conditions to the SW  could facilitate an overland crossing.