Monday, September 08, 2014
The wheatear was on the beach at Achnahaird on Saturday; I snapped it because I haven't seen many wheatears this year and this might be my last of the year. I wonder if their numbers have dropped; or have I just been unlucky?
A bunch of twite - twelve to fifteen - buzzed around the rocks. Four of them landed nearby as I watched the wheatear, and sat there for some time, preening and twittering. A sanderling was also on the beach, but there was no sign of the glaucous gull.
We went to Edinburgh last week for a couple of days, to shop in Ikea and John Lewis. We stayed at the Premier Inn in Newhaven, which is part of the Port of Leith. We went into town (using our free bus-passes for the first time) and spent an enjoyable morning sightseeing. A peregrine was spotted over the Scottish parliament building.
Back at Newhaven I walked out to the end of the quay. Great rafts of eider duck (and possibly some auks) were far out on the sea. Oystercatchers and turnstones ran along the edge of the waves below, and a gannet and a fulmar flew past. Eventually I looked across water to this inaccessible area where kittiwakes have evidently made themselves at home.
I was thrilled to hear the calls of Sandwich terns, both because I'd assumed it was too late for terns now and because I actually like the calls of Sandwich terns. This is, I think, a juvenile bird.
Common terns were also seen.
// posted by Christine @ 1:56 AM 
