East Lothian

Whilst we were at our daughter  last week, we too the opportunity to explore around East Lothian and the nooks and crannies along the coast of the Firth of Forth. We had an interesting time exploring some of the villages, harbour and market towns. Of course we had our binoculars with us and the camera was always handy.

Dunbar turned out to be a favourite spot and looks like it would be a good place to do some birding, offshore there were Eider, Cormorant and Goldeneye, with Redshank, Oystercatcher and Dunlin showing on the shoreline,

We also stopped for a coffee just between Port Seton and Longniddry at the car park overlooking the sea at "Longniddry Bents 3" this again provided with Oystercatcher, Curlew, Dunlin, Redshank, Twite, Linnet and Turnstone on the shore, I was then 'forced' to get the scope out to check offshore discovering Black-necked Grebe, Eider and our favourite UK duck the Long-tailed Duck, awesome.

As we drove along the coast we came to Aberlady and OMG what a surprise that was, the bay and estuary (Peffer Burn) was heaving with birds; Thousands of Golden Plover, Lapwing, Oystercatcher, Shelduck, Redshank, Dunlin, Godwit, Goldeneye, Mallard, a few Pink-footed Geese, Curlew Teal, Wigeon, the weather was very dull and we parked on the road so no photos and we had somewhere else to visit so we had to move on, but we will be back and also have a wander around the Aberlady Nature Reserve, it looks fabulous.

Later on we had been to the market town of Haddington and as we left we were driving down a country lane and pulled over a because I needed to find out where we were and also Tina took the chance to do some messages whilst the car wasn't twisting and turning. While she was doing this I spotted some movement on the field about 100 yards away and saw a small flock of Yellowhammer!

This was shortly followed by Redwing and a perched Buzzard. So on the whole very productive and we weren't even birding!