Move into '92, still in a room without a view

BLACKDOG! and my annual attempt to see interesting seaduck. The drake Surf Scoter was seen yesterday, and after my dips on it last year, and only seeing it asleep the year before, I thought it was time to strike while the Irn Bru was hot.

Got to Blackdog, parked carefully so as to annoy any large items of farm machinery, and scanned to sea - big scoter flock to the south, so set off at healthy stomp pace. Set up on the sand dunes about 1 km to the south and pretty much the first bird I saw (well maybe the tenth) was Coco the Clown, drake Surf Scoter. I made the mistake of trying a phone-scope photo, leading to this disaster. I'm not even sure it's visible.


Worse, as I was trying to get some other shots, it was flushed by a helicopter and flew off with 20 others down south towards Bridge of Don. Nice while it lasted. There were about 500 Common Scoters on the water, a single Long-tailed Duck for good measure, and maybe 500+ Common Eiders. Who's counting? And 20 Red-throated Divers - looks like I'm counting.

Very disappointed because Blackdog is usually a shoe-in for a disgusting corpse of something on the tideline, but I was out of luck today. The children will go hungry tonight.