Monday, December 15, 2014
The weather over the past week has kept us mostly indoors, so this morning I went out to enjoy a few hours of rare sunshine. At Ardmair I was counting ringed plovers (13) and looking in vain for a turnstone that we glimpsed here yesterday in the hail, when an unfamiliar call drew my attention to two small birds (which I'd probably disturbed) flying around high above. They were snow buntings, and they soon came back down to forage on the camp-site.
A glaucous gull was patrolling the beach with herring and great black-backed gulls. This was darker than the glauc, lacking that bird's snowy appearance, so obviously a different individual. I haven't seen the original one for a few days.
An otter ran up the beach and across the camp-site, and I became aware of how cold it actually was. Home to lunch and an afternoon of work - during which the sky darkened and the rain returned.
// posted by Christine @ 9:40 AM 
