Fife’s five species of scoter in a day -

Largo Bay, spring 2023

J. WILSON

For several decades Largo Bay in Fife was the go-to site in the UK to see Surf Scoter, with multiple birds present for extended periods of time attracting birders from far and wide. The five years leading up to spring 2023 marked a real change in fortune however, with Surf Scoter vanishing from Largo Bay and the numbers of Common and Velvet Scoter also dropping off noticeably during this period. The exact reason for this decline wasn’t clear, but presumably was linked to changes in food availability.

During late winter and early spring 2023 the situation began to improve, with the Common Scoter flock at Ruddon’s Point increasing to a couple of thousand birds, and on 8 April the flock was joined by an adult male first Surf Scoter, a promising sign. However, during April 2023 it was the increase in the number of Velvet Scoter off Lower Largo that was most striking, with more than 800 present during the latter part of the month, and on 26 April a pair of Surf Scoter was found amongst them. Ever the optimists, some Fife birders began to wonder out loud 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 April I briefly stopped off at Lower Largo to see the Surf Scoter pair as it had been a few years since I had seen a female. It was rather murky due to drizzle but I picked them out within a few minutes and was so impressed by the number of Velvet relatively close inshore (Lower Largo is one of the better spots in Fife for reasonably good views of seaduck) that I made a mental note to come back the following day, assuming that the viewing conditions had improved, to check through them properly.