An hour in the garden

Inspired by Springwatch, I thought I'd try to get some pictures of the wildlife around the garden at the moment.

I started with the starlings in the letterbox. They're still feeding madly - caterpillars for breakfast again:





Then I headed down the fields and had to take a couple of gratuitously cute rabbit shots:





In our bottom field we have a skylark nesting:



And the sheep are, as ever, a joy to photograph, though I wish I hadn't taken this one through sheep netting - I'll have to shoot her again on a sunny day:



Then I topped up the bird feeders and settled down to see what turned up. This is my shot of the day:



It got busy:



The sparrows brought their three fledglings down from the kitchen roof - here are two of them stretching their wings, though I think they look like they're about to burst into a rousing music hall chorus!



Lots more bird pictures if you click on any of the above to go through to my Flickr account, but I'll leave you with this picture of Dunnet beach taken last weekend. Remember all those shots they show on the news of beaches so packed that every square inch of sand is covered with towels? This is what the most popular beach in the area looked like on the hottest Sunday afternoon of the year so far (about 25C):



We counted 18 families on its two-mile stretch :o)

An hour on the beach

And not my beach at Armadale for once. I was on my way to Wick to start off the Christmas shopping and took a small detour to stretch my legs on Dunnet beach:



It's a really ginormous beach that swings round in a big curve from Castletown to Dunnet. This is Dunnet Head, which is the most northerly point on the mainland:



Today, even though it was lunchtime, I had it to myself :o) (There are some benefits to freezing cold weather!). Well, not quite to myself.

A bunch of ringed plovers (and something else, which I haven't identified) were hanging around digging for food:



There was a solitary curlew doing his best Meryl Streep (French Lieutenant's Woman) impression:



A Greater Black-Backed Gull was fishing for some lunch:



And finding some:



And I just hung around by the water and practised my panning shots :o)

I have to say, I'm really pleased with these. They might be grainy - I had to push the ISO to get the lens speed up - but I think I'm moving from pictures that record something towards pictures that show something, if that makes sense?