Big seas and little bays

Once again I've been tardy in my blogging - I do apologise. The pictures have been put up on Flickr; I just haven't got round to writing about them.

Anyway, just over a week ago OH and I went for a walk along past Thurso castle to see if the shipwreck he remembered from when he was a kid was still there (it wasn't). The sea was big and the wind was up:



which made it foamy:



The birds, as usual, were completely unbothered by it all:



although I did see an oystercatcher absolutely legging it out of the way of a wave, which was very funny. Sadly the picture was out of focus!

Wednesday's trip out was closer to home. At the far end of the village there's a track to a deserted village called Polouriscaig. It's quite a walk to get there (for an unfit photographer carrying a bag of gear anyway) and I was considering just walking to the top of the second hill, which is about two thirds of the way there, but then saw on the map that the burn at the foot of that hill led down to an inlet marked Port Mor. The contour lines on the sides were very steep, but it looked as if the burn itself went down a much shallower slope, so I decided to go and take a look.

I was right:



The burn was lovely; lots and lots of miniature waterfalls:



The climb down really wasn't too hard at all. There were a couple of points where I had to stop and consider my options (as in 'Do I attempt to follow that sheep track or do I turn round and go back?'), but pretty soon the bay was tantalisingly close and I was hoping against hope that there wasn't a vertical drop for the last bit like so many of these places have:



Fortunately the slope down from that grassy bit on the right was quite gentle and I made it all the way down to the beach:



My thigh muscles did not thank me for the climb back up!

Sandside

Sandside is a huge (10,000 acre) estate just outside Reay. Most of it is private, but they've reached an agreement with the Highland Council to allow public access to the beach and the harbour.

We've had high seas over the last couple of days and massive amounts of seaweed has washed up on the beach, attracting seabirds to feed. These are turnstones:



As you can see by the tin can, lots of rubbish has washed up as well.

I tried to get a bit arty by mirroring Orkney in the background with the rock in the foreground - didn't quite work!



The oystercatchers at Sandside harbour are much tamer than the ones at Armadale and Melvich, so I was able to get closer:



And, if you'll excuse the pun, I caught this one in a reflective moment:



All in all, a nice afternoon:

Cold day

I wouldn't want to be on Orkney right now:



I had to go to the post office at Melvich today, so instead of turning the car round in someone's driveway, I went round the loop to see if there were any oystercatchers at Portskerra. There were:



And this is why I want that new camera and bigger zoom after Christmas; the bird is sharp but because I only have 6.3MP, I can't crop in to get the shot I want without the picture going grainy (this was only ISO200):



As I went back to the car, I spotted someone looking for their lunch:



And this is my favourite of the day:

Back on the beach

Back to the regularly-scheduled programming today!

I had an attempt at some arty-farty black and white, but I'm not sure how well it's worked. These three were the best:







And I took another picture of water rippling over sand, which I like:



There were oyster catchers on the beach this evening, the first time I'd seen them at Armadale. They're a lot less spooky than the gulls, which took off the moment they saw me lift the camera, but with the oyster catchers you get closer:



and closer (guess which direction the wind was coming from?!):



and finally a bit too close:



On the way back up to the house I got macro-happy again, particularly with the insects which were out in force:





And a dandelion to finish:

Melvich harbour

Last night we went for a walk on the harbour beach at Melvich - not the big sandy one, but the small rocky one where the slipway is.



And we saw oystercatchers - lots of them! So I warmed up by shooting them on the rocks:





and then had a crack at shooting them in flight:







And thank you to Sasha (and Sasha's owner) for this one: