Birdwatchers’ Facebook in the Lothians has been all of a twitter over the past ten days or so. Storm Amy, like all good storms, blew large numbers of birds off course. The result was a flurry of rarities at Musselburgh Lagoons – my local birding patch. A Marsh Sandpiper was the real highlight. That’s a genuine rarity wherever in the UK you see it. Spotted redshank, a large group of barnacle geese and a lone spoonbill were all duly spotted and added to my notes.

That spoonbill, though – a photogenic bird for sure, but it was way too distant for my camera. Hence a second trip on a Sunday afternoon with the express purpose of bagging a photo of the Musselburgh Spoonbill.

Inevitably, I was unsuccessful.

Oh, I saw the marsh sandpiper again, so the afternoon wasn’t exactly a washout. And I enjoyed an afternoon of birding in fabulous light – the sort of mild autumn day that makes you glad to be out and about. But the spoonbill, I was reliably informed, had been seen in Falkirk. Oh well.

Walking home by the sea wall, I spotted two birdwatchers pointing their binoculars inland – in the “wrong” direction. I followed suit, and was rewarded with a beautiful sighting of a stonechat sitting on an old graffitied sign. I couldn’t be that lucky, surely? But by the time I got my camera out of my bag, far from flying away, it had been joined by another bird. Two stonechats. Nice. All I need now is a photo contest on the theme of urban nature.