Christine's walking & birds blog

The innermost corner of the harbour has become a guillemot's graveyard; here are three of four drifting in the oily water near the boats.


At least I'm fairly sure they're guillemots - they seemed to be missing their heads. They might be the dead ones I saw before, just washing in and out with the tide; but this guillemot, hiding against the harbour wall, looks as though it might soon join them.


It always seemed an odd place for these auks to hang around; but what is actually killing them, I don't know. Perhaps the bold razorbill yesterday at Chanonry Point was also sick. I think it will be a long time before I take pleasure again in the sight of auks - perhaps not until after this year's breeding season when plenty of healthy juveniles are to be seen far out on the sea where they should be (fingers crossed).

A walk along the river path brought no firecrest, but I did catch a glimpse of a female brambling.

And along West Shore Street, I snapped off three pictures of a glaucous gull from the car.


What's annoying is that two pics suggest the gull is making a sound of some kind. Had I been walking, I might have heard it. All this car-birding has to stop. But by the time I'd parked up, sat out a shower of rain, and then walked back along the front, the gull had disappeared.