Saturday, July 09, 2016
Between the sand-dunes and the road, a solitary golden plover foraged among the thistles and the sheep.
The chick on the pebbly beach was almost invisible from the cliff-top, but the anxious calling of a common sandpiper drew attention to its presence.
The ravens appear to be plotting something, but the sheep and her lamb don't seem bothered.
There was no sign this week of Arctic skuas, so I had to be content with a great skua flying across the headland from north to south. It progressed in a rather odd manner, with forward flight punctuated by sudden rearing halts that seemed too brief to be hovers. It had almost no tail, and I wondered if the regular midair pauses were a way of regaining its balance. Or it was catching insects. Or it was, indeed, just hovering to scan the ground below.
A small bunch of twite, a family party perhaps, skipped about among the gorse bushes. The white streaks in the picture are raindrops.
The rain was still falling when I spotted the black-throated diver on a road-side loch. I pulled as far into a passing place as I could get and snapped it over the top of the bracken.
On another loch, two red-throated divers were sailing serenely on sheltered, calm water. Stopping at the high lay-by for a last scan of the salt-marsh, I could see a greenshank striding about in the river way down the beach; and then I tore myself away from this beguiling place and drove home in the rain.
// posted by Christine @ 3:13 PM 
