Monday, April 05, 2021
It's been a madhouse here with gale-force winds all night and most of today, and a mixture of rain, sleet, hail, and snow - much of the time horizontal. I suffered one shower of hail down by the loch, which gradually turned to sleet. The1st winter Iceland was among herring gulls at the spit. I stood behind a gorse bush and clicked off a few shots.
There were ringed plover and turnstone foraging in the seaweed, and my heart leapt when I caught sight of a nicely coloured back, thinking it was my first dunlin of the year. It moved closer to a second bird, and I realised that they were golden plover.
Just as I thought this, a familiar call announced the arrival of a greenshank. It flew a little way along the river and landed at the end of a stony island - right where it could see me, behind my gorse bush!
Sure enough it soon took off - but at least it went up the loch, and probably went down again between the spit and the camp-site point. I trudged home in falling snow, mindful that I should be more careful at the spit; like the other "usual" waders, dunlin tolerate you being there, but the plovers were much more wary.
// posted by Christine @ 8:13 AM 
