Visit To Musselburgh Links : 17 Jul 2011

Visit To Musselburgh Links : 17 Jul 2011

On the last day of our visit to Musselburgh we decided to try a site that we had tried to get at before but which was then fenced off. I discovered a map of this site in “Where to Watch Birds in Britain” (entry no 364) so we decided to try again and this time we came to it from the far end. Previously we had tried to get there from the Goose Green end at the mouth of the River Esk. This time we tried from the far end near the roundabout at the end of the horse racing track. We started off rather late in the day and looked at two of the three hides that face onto the scrapes. At one there was a Black-tailed Godwit and a Grey Heron and a few Black-headed Gulls but at the next hide we had more luck.

Here we found a group of Dunlin (some in their breeding plumage) mixed in with a fair sized group of Redshanks and lots of Lapwing. There was also an Oystercatcher or two. We took a long walk through the site which has some fields of hay and other grasses and a few small birds rose from this occasionally but rather frustratingly they dropped down immediately not really giving us time to get a good look at them. We followed the path round just by the coastal path and as we walked we could hear more Oystercatchers and a Tern flew over our heads. There were still Swallows in the air but the afternoon was getting into evening and about 7.30pm we returned to the car. We had, however, confirmed for ourselves that this is likely to be a good spot for a future opportunity.

Bird List