Birds

We seem to have an abundance of sparrows up here this year. It's causing the odd punch-up on the bird feeders:







Though some species do manage to share it in peace:



Fortunately the hooded crow hasn't tried to hop on yet - he nearly breaks the fence, so I dread to think what he'd do to the feeder:



I'm trying to make more time for photography in my life, so yesterday morning I went down to the beach for an hour before breakfast, hoping to see the otter. This was the best picture I got during that time:



Not encouraging!! But today I went to the puffinry at Drumholistan and got some of my best pictures to date, which cheered me up no end:















I was amazed how close they let me get - apart from the first picture with just the puffin's head in it, these are uncropped photos.

Catching up

I finally got round to editing the photos stacking up on my hard drive!

The robin is back in the garden and having singing competitions with the robin next door. If you think the perspective looks a bit odd, you'd be right - he was sitting on top of a telegraph pole!



Back down at fence-post level:



The rabbits have been stuffing themselves in preparation for winter:



And we had a surprise next door - one of the Shetlands foaled (no-one knew she was pregnant!):





The dogs are enjoying the last of the good weather on the beach:









The seas are picking up and soon it'll be winter again...



I saw an otter on the beach on Wednesday and nearly saw it again this morning - there were fresh prints in the sand and if I hadn't stopped to go 'Ooooooh, foal!' I'd have probably seen it again.

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)

Some live wildlife for a change!

We woke up to glorious sunshine this morning, so I decided to get out with the camera while the sun shone and worry about work this afternoon. Good decision, as it turned out, because the sun went in around 11 and it rained on and off for the rest of the day. Still, I went down to Port a' Chinn again and this was the view from the top:



The rabbits were out and about (the lines across the picture are sheep netting):





and I don't know who was more surprise, me or this rock pipit when it landed on a tractor tyre about 10 feet in front of me:



I climbed back up from Port a Chinn and went down to Armadale bay to check on the ringed plover family. Thanks to the wind over the past few days, the nest had been covered over with sand and I found one dead chick. But both adults were still around and getting very agitated when I went towards one area of the beach, so I'm hopeful that the other three chicks are live and kicking, although I didn't find them. I got some better shots of the parents this time:





I also saw this bird - wasn't too sure what it was and thought it might be a juvenile oystercatcher, but turns out it's actually a sandpiper: