Christine's walking & birds blog

After a brief and unusually successful shopping trip (new walking boots for Greger, gloves and a fleece for me) to Inverness, and a good lunch in Girvans, we drove out to Alturlie. It was nice to enjoy the bustle of the city and then swap it for the windswept shore of the Moray Firth. As we drove down to the water over the level crossing, a flock of waders in flight further along turned white underparts to the sun and then landed. I assumed they were redshanks - a wader we can generally be sure of seeing here. But for now I was mesmerised by the floating rafts of scaup, probably driven into the bay by strong westerlies.



The waders further along proved to be at least fifty knot and two or three bar-tailed godwits - as well as a handful of oystercatchers.




I snapped them from the car without flushing them. There were no redshanks, but in the field on the other side of the road, half a dozen curlews were foraging in stubble. Also present on the water - a flock of wigeon and a male and a female goldeneye. A nice duck-and-wader fix before the long drive home.