Where Did January Go!

 I know January isn't quite finished yet, but I won't get chance to do another post this month, as we are off to the Highlands for a week, so what have we been up to?

We have kept it fairly local. We have made two attempts to find a Smew, the female at Bathgate and the male at Cameron Reservoir, we failed both times, no sign of them when we went, although both have been reported since! Never mind.

Elsewhere we have gone down to the Forth (Kinghorn) a few times after sightings of  Whales have been reported and of course, nothing about when we were there!

On the plus side it was our first visit to Cameron Reservoir since we moved up and it certainly looks a good place to return to. We have made our first visit to out local loch, Lochore, which is always great. I have started a thread for Lochore Meadows on the birds forum with the intent of updating it regularly, that's the plan anyway.

So here are a few pics for January......

Whooper Swans by Cameron Reservoir,

Pink-footed Geese over Cameron Reservoir,

Dunlin, Turnstone, Redshank and Oystercatcher at Musselburgh (Fisherrow Harbour),

Redshank at Fisherrow,

Turnstones at Fisherrow,

Turnstone at Fisherrow,

Curlew and Lapwing at Musselburgh Lagoons,

Lapwing and a Shoveler in the background at the Lagoons,

Curlew at the Lagoons,

A Parcel load of Oystercatchers!

A few Black-headed Gulls and a couple of Shelduck at the back.

Oystercatchers at Pittenweem

and some Cormorant too.

Goosander at Bathgate, but where's the Smew!

TTFN.

Starting the Year at Loch Leven

 Firstly a Happy New Year to anyone reading this!

After a very busy end to the year and start to this one, we finally manage to get out for a couple of hours and drove up to Burleigh Sands on Loch Leven. There weren't many photo opportunities but we started the year list (apart from the few we've had in the garden) with a male Bullfinch:

In the adjacent tree was a Goldcrest, but it just wouldn't stop still long enough for me to get a shot before it flew off, but still a great start and we'd only been walking a couple of minutes.

Then it went quiet as we walked to the hide. There were plenty of Tufted Duck on the loch as usual, also loads of Goldeneye, this is as close as they got though:

From the hide, there were plenty of Gulls on the scrape (Black-headed, Herring & Lesser Black-backed) plus a pair of Goosander. The highlight though was a Kingfisher shooting past twice, way to fast for me to even pick the camera up, so I didn't try, just enjoyed the little blue missile zooming through.

It was very cold in the hide, so we didn't stay too long, we headed back and went for a stroll through the woods past the car park. On the way we picked up a 'Water' Robin:

and a Dunnock:

We saw 21 species there in total and with an unsuccessful attempt at Whale watching the following day (Saturday) we added Eide, Oystercatcher & Turnstone, bringing us to 33 so far for the year.