A windy but sometimes sunny day on the east coast brought distant views of bottlenose dolphins at Chanonry Point (a madhouse, where we had to queue for a parking space) and some Sandwich terns among the commons. Crossing to Cromarty we saw loads of terns in a feeding frenzy, and groups of guillemots and razorbills on the water.
Udale Bay, still at highish tide, held oystercatchers, mergansers, greylag and Canada geese, lapwings, common terns, and a ruddy shelduck.
This is not a "tickable" species in the UK, as the ruddy shelduck is a popular bird for private collections, ornamental lakes, etc, with escaping birds counted as feral. I'm not sure the pair we saw in Gran Canaria was genuinely wild, either. I sometimes use the word tick as shorthand for a new bird, but I don't really like reducing birds to ticks; I don't tick lists, either of birds or of hill walks - I build up my own lists. Ticking (or even worse, "ticking off") sounds as though you're disposing of the bird or the mountain - and who wants to do that? Meanwhile, this duck - a warm splash of colour amid all the grey and white gulls - came as a surprise and was certainly nice to see.
