After several years in the doldrums, with disappointingly low numbers of scoter present, Largo Bay in Fife has seen a steady increase in numbers more recently. Initially this increase was focused around Ruddon’s Point, historically the place in the U.K. to see Surf Scoter, with a flock of several thousand Common Scoter forming during the last few months. In early April the first Surf Scoter in Largo Bay since 2015 was found in the Common Scoter flock at Ruddon’s, a promising sign.
However, during April 2023 it was the increase in the number of Velvet Scoter off Lower Largo that has been most striking, with 800+ present during the latter part of the month. Ever the optimists, this increase triggered a few local Fife birders to wonder whether it might mean that we finally got in on some of Lothian’s White-winged Scoter action.
On my way back from a meeting in Edinburgh on the evening of 27/04/23 I stopped off at Lower Largo to try to see the pair of Surf Scoter that had been found there the day before (it had been a few years since I had seen a female). It was rather murky and drizzly but I picked the pair out within a few minutes as luckily they were close enough inshore for the murk not to matter. I was so impressed with the number of Velvet present that I made a mental note to come back the following day, assuming that the visibility was better, to check them properly. Lower Largo is one the better locations in Fife for getting reasonably close views of Velvet Scoter.
The evening of the 28/04/23 I stepped out of my front door, undecided about where to head off birding. On glancing down the street to the sea I saw that it might be okay conditions at Lower Largo and so headed off in that direction, hoping that the showers forecast for later would hold off for a bit.
I arrived at the Temple carpark at Lower Largo at just after 18:00 and started scanning the closer scattered group of Velvet Scoter, about 200m away. I got to about the tenth bird and was stopped in my tracks. “Surely that’s a Stejneger’s” I found myself saying under my breath. But that couldn’t be right. I’d come here to check the Velvets for something rarer, I’d barely started looking, and the bird wasn’t a distant blob that kept disappearing behind waves. This is not how birding tends to work. I took another look.
I watched the bird for a couple more minutes, during which time it was mostly and unhelpfully facing away, and then messaged a couple of the local birders asking whether they were anywhere nearby saying that I thought I had a Stejneger’s Scoter. A couple of them messaged back immediately that they were on their way. The bird promptly tucked its head in, at which point I started to doubt that I had really seen that profile, and wondered whether it might in fact be a White-winged. I even messaged the guys who were on their way saying “May ‘just’ be white-winged. Need another look”.
Thankfully, the bird woke up a few minutes later, so I could get more prolonged views of that profile and the bill, and was reassured that my original identification was correct. The straight-sloping forehead lacked the ‘step’ down to the swollen bill base that I would have expected on White-winged (I had seen the Lothian White-winged Scoter a couple of winters before as well as a few in California). The bird also had a prominent, almost horn-like protuberance that appeared ‘stuck on’ to the bill at the nostrils, which I think the uniform sloping forehead might have made even more obvious. The bill had much more extensive black than on Velvet Scoter, with the black reaching from the bill base to the nostrils, and the area in front of the nostrils appearing reddish orange (it was on the morning of the 29th, in better light, that I clearly saw the yellow lower border to the orangish red). It also had a very obvious and long white ‘flash’ that stretched up behind the eye and seemed to narrow to a fine point.
Not wanting to take my eyes off the bird for too long in case I lost it, I put out the rather rushed messages on the Fife bird news WhatsApp group “looks like Stejneger’s (rather than white-winged) Scoter at Lower Largo, from the Temple” and onto Twitter “looks like Stejneger’s Scoter at Lower Largo, from the Temple”. A few minutes after I had put the news out Ken Shaw and Simon Pinder arrived, quickly got onto the bird and came to the same conclusion as me, it was a Stejneger’s Scoter.
Unfortunately, heavy rain showers arrived about 15 minutes later, the light turned appalling, and we lost track of the bird. After about half an hour I was soaked and shivering, the poor conditions looked settled for the evening, and I headed home. However, shortly afterwards the viewing conditions improved and about ten local birders were able to get onto the bird.
I’d found the Stejneger’s so soon (within a couple of minutes) after arriving that I did not get the opportunity to scan through any of the other scoter scattered along the stretch of shore. Who knows what might have been found if I had…
The bird was still present the next day, about 200 metres west from where I had found it, and was present until May 13th. During its stay it ranged along a 4km stretch of coast between the Crusoe Hotel in Lower Largo to Dunbarnie Links, and was seen by several hundred birders who visited from across the UK. It was seen to display to a female Velvet Scoter on several occasions.
Was the Lower Largo Stejeneger’s Scoter the same bird as that seen in Lothian during December 2022? The influx and turnover of Velvet Scoter into Largo Bay during April 2023 has been extraordinary. Until this week, if anyone had claimed that a 300m stretch of Fife coast held up to four White-winged Scoter and a Stejneger’s Scoter they would have been dismissed as delusional. It is therefore conceivable that this is a different bird, but then I would say, that wouldn’t I.
However, the Scoter story wasn’t over quite yet…
On the evening of the 28/04/23 Alex Shepherd posted on the local WhatsApp birding group some grabs from a video that he had taken by the Temple carpark, Lower Largo at 11:00 that morning whilst watching the Surf Scoters, flagging a bird that he thought might be the Stejneger’s Scoter. The image was not of a Stejneger’s Scoter but did look very good for a White-winged Scoter!
On the morning of 29/04/23 I arrived at Lower Largo just before 06:00. There was already a small crowd scanning from by the Temple carpark, with a male Surf Scoter the highlight up to that point. I decided that I’d walk up to the start of the coastal path a few hundred metres to the east as there were a few small flocks of Velvet Scoter in that area, the light would be better, and the shelter from the breeze and occasional drizzle there might help if scanning distant birds. I was the only birder present and at 06:15, just a couple of minutes after I started to scan the closest scoter groups about 150m away, I spotted an adult male White-winged Scoter close inshore, and put the news out (at 06:20). It was great to pick up this bird so soon after finding the Stejneger’s just 12 hours earlier. It was striking how different the two species appeared. The White-winged Scoter had a steeply sloping forehead that met the swollen bill base, producing a very obvious ‘step’ above the nostril bulge (as opposed to Stejneger’s rather uniform gently sloping forehead and obvious horny protuberance above the nostrils). The light was sufficiently good to see the pinkish rather than yellow (Velvet) or red and yellow (Stejneger’s) bill colour. This colouration was restricted to level with and in front of the nostrils. The bird also had a distinctive white ‘flash’ below the eye which extended behind and up above the eye, though it did not appear quite as long as on the previous day’s Stejneger’s.
After about 15 minutes I returned to the group of birders by the Temple who were on to what I assumed to be the same White-winged Scoter, though it was somewhat further west that when is was watching it, and also indicated that a second bird had been seen further to the west still. When the Stejneger’s was re-found a short while later it was assumed by some that it must have been that rather than a second White-winged Scoter (the idea of two White-winged Scoter being present being a bit far fetched). However, at about 08:00 observers watching ‘the’ White-winged Scoter at the Temple realized that they were looking at two different birds (one dived, the other did not). I actually think that three White-winged Scoter were present early that morning, the bird that I had picked up, the bird out from the Temple, and the bird off towards the Crusoe Hotel. After I had left Lower Largo there were then reports of three White-winged Scoter. I decided I would head back the next day.
Early on the morning of 30/04/23 I headed back to the same location as the morning before on the eastern edge of the village and started to scan the Velvet Scoter just offshore. At 06:55 I picked up a White-winged Scoter directly out from where I was standing which was slowly drifting east. After I had put the news out on this bird I continued to scan west and picked up a second bird at 07:20, and put this news out too. I put a message out on the local WhatsApp group asking whether there were any White-winged Scoter being watched from the Crusoe Hotel (about 500m to the west) at the moment. The reply came back that there was one there too. I headed along to the group of birders at the Temple and confirmed that they were watching the western of the two birds that I had seen. I then headed straight over to the Crusoe Hotel and watched that bird which was in a different area than the Temple bird. So definitely three White -winged Scoter.
Later that morning, after I had left, Paul French found a White-winged Scoter about 2km to the east of Lower Largo, the same time that two birds were being watched from the Temple carpark and another bird was being watched from by the Crusoe Hotel. Two White-winged Scoter were present from 01/05 to 05/05, with a single bird present until 14/05. On the morning of 21/05 I saw a male off Leven for about twenty minutes before it flew off strongly to the west in the company of two Velvet Scoter.
The number of Velvet Scoter present in Largo Bay started to decline from around 05/05, were much reduced by 14/05, and there were only a handful present by the end of the month. It will be interesting to see whether numbers build up again this autumn, or in a similar manner next April.
To add potential confusion to the situation at Lower Largo, an apparent White-winged Scoter x Velvet Scoter hybrid was reported several times, and there was also a Velvet Scoter with aberrant bill colouration (all black with small dirty yellow patches at bill base and a large pale nail) which might at some angles appear superficially White-winged Scoter-like.
The number of seaduck present off Lower Largo during late April was quite phenomenal. As well as the adult male Stejneger’s and four adult male White-winged Scoter there were five Surf Scoter (two adult male, two immature male and a female), c. 1000 Velvet Scoter, and although only 30 or so Common Scoter nearshore, there was a mega flock of up to 10,000 about 5km offshore. Add to this 10+ Black-throated Diver, 5 Red-necked Grebe, Black Guillemot plus the ubiquitous Eider, Long-tailed Duck, Red-throated Diver, and Red-Breasted Merganser and it made for some truly exceptional birding.
The short stretch of Fife coast illustrated below held, between late January and late April 2023, Pacific Diver, White-billed Diver, King Eider, 5 Surf Scoter, 4 White-winged Scoter and Stejneger’s Scoter.
Chatterstanes 