Mayday! Mayhem!

Did some office work in the early morning, eventually picking up an email from Ed Parnell in the UK asking if I had been to see the black scoter yet - doh! It was the first I had heard about it, so I put it on the 'To do list' for the day. Whilst working I had a garden tick from the window (a pair of collared doves) and updated the garden list. Still a woeful total at just 92 species, but some quality birds in there if you are a Norfolk boy.

The gallery for the black scoter twitch today. The cultural differences between the Swedes and the English are never more obvious than in a gallery such as this. In the UK the first question on arriving at a site would be "Is it still showing?" and then, if an affirmative answer is received, "Where is it?". Things are a lot quieter in a Swedish gallery (which I often enjoy) and you often get to find the bird yourself (ditto) or not... [BTW it's OK to shout and jump about when you do see the bird, in this case the scoter was at least 200m offshore and beyond scaring].

Working speedily through the essential tasks, we all piled in the car and headed for Sibirien. No sign of the black scoter sadly and eventually rain put paid to our efforts at birding or playing on the beach and we left. The gallery apparently divided into two factions, some saw the bird and others did not. Was it there? Who knows? I did see a nice flock of about 85 common scoter, 15 scaup, a scattering of great crested and red-necked grebes and five little terns. Stopped off at Grytskären on the way home briefly, but the rain caught up with us again. Some hirundines in though, with barn swallow (35), house martin (10) and sand martin (10) hawking in the lee of the nearest island.

After lunch, I took Number 1 birding and we headed first to Petersberg. The reedbeds here had singing sedge (1) and reed warbler (1) and a male marsh harrier was getting busy. Next stop was Klarningen which was quiet, although ruff (2), whinchat (male) and wheatear (male) suggested a bit of movement. The greenshank (1) was still over at Eskiltorpsdammar.

Just looked through my day's images and found this, I was searching so hard for blackie it seems that I failed to spot the stellar supporting cast, and I missed the black scoter too (can you spot him hiding at the back? shout if you can).