Saturday..
A damp and dreary  day at the beginning of March wouldn't seem like a day made for interesting sightings but it just goes to show you can never tell.
It started well in the morning with a Mealy Redpoll appearing again by the house at Dunfermline  but this one was a different, duller individual to the bird seen on Feb 25th, presumably a first winter bird.

In the afternoon it brightened up and I decided to try a seawatch from Kinghorn with no real expectations although it was in the back of my mind that a Humpback Whale had been seen in this part of the Forth recently and the conditions were good for cetacean spotting -flat light and calm seas.  On route to Kinghorn a group of 9 Waxwing were by the A921 near Dalgety Bay, nice..

So Humpback Whale may have been in the back of my mind but it still didn't prepare me for a bloody Humpback Whale suddenly surfacing in my scope view! The animal put on a good show and appeared at the surface several times in the hour or so I was there. It appeared to be actively foraging moving E-W, back W-E then returning E-W covering a relatively small area and shallow dives. There was certainly a suggestion of fish shoals by the presence of numerous Grey Seal, gulls and auks in the same area. Awesome experience and my first Whale species in UK waters. Sightings of Humpbacks seem to be on the upturn in UK waters e.g. one in the past few weeks off South Devon and five animals that spent several weeks at the end of 2016 off Shetland. Interestingly photos of one of the Shetland animals were matched exactly with the tail flukes of an animal from a photo data base in the Caribbean. It was assumed that UK and Ireland Humpbacks were more likely to be a part of the East Atlantic population coming up from the Cape Verdes.
The views were great through the scope but the animal was a  bit distant for pics. A couple of still video grabs below.