A successful day...

With a couple of reports of Black Guillemot at Cheswick last week, we decided that we would target catching up with one today as it was easily the commonest bird missing from our county list.

While the light wasn't great first thing, we gave it an hour or two on Holy Island. There was no sign of yesterday's Shore Larks but a Snow Bunting flew over and we did see 18 Twite and a Short-eared Owl.

Next we did head to Cheswick and parked by the railway bridge. We walked through the dunes and started scanning the sea, and it wasn't long before my dad did pick up a first-winter Black Guillemot about half way out. We watched it for a while, but once it started diving it was really difficult to get onto again.

Having not seen one (it?) for seven years, we also hoped to see the drake Black Scoter while we were here. As we walked north, we noticed a small group scoter just off Cheswick Black Rocks. Setting up the scope revealed the Black Scoter with some female Commons. We enjoyed some really good views of this bird - much better than we were expecting.

Other birds off Cheswick included a Great Northern Diver, Long-tailed Duck, Red-breasted Mergansers and a Goosander. 

Black Scoter - with female Common Scoters

Black Guillemot obviously!