Early mornings

I was up at half past five this morning (though to be fair to the dogs their body clocks were saying half past six), so decided to make the trek over to John O'Groats to the grey seal beach.

Glad I did. Grey seal pups are one of the cutest creatures alive.





And the beach was just packed with seals:





They're by no means tame, but by staying low and moving slowly, you can get very close without spooking them:







The focus is a little bit off on this, damn it, but I couldn't resist keeping it:



And I never knew seals could boggle, but this one's eyes are almost out of its head!:



The males get very, very aggressive at this time of year, but there wasn't much fighting going on this morning, the worst of it was a bit of handbagging:



And how's this for a goofy grin?:



I spent about two hours there and would have stayed longer, despite the rain, if it wasn't for someone coming over the top of the dunes with a camera and marching straight up to the seals, who promptly disappeared into the water. 100+ seals all galumphing off a beach in under 2 minutes is an impressive sight though.

Right place, right time

There are precious few places in the world where you can be standing on your back door step at 10 o'clock at night, letting your dogs out for their last sniff round the garden and listening to red stags roaring in the hills all around you. Since I'm lucky enough to live in one of them and I happened to be awake at half past six this morning, I thought I'd jump in the car and drive the big square from home to Tongue to Altnaharra to Syre to Kinbrace to Melvich to home again in search of deer.

I must have seen about 300.

Unfortunately many of them were at that time where it's dark enough for them to still be feeling comfortable near the road, but not quite light enough for the camera to get decent results. Still, by 9am the shots were getting acceptable:







Remember this guy? Look at the last but one photo in this post and then compare - I think it's the same stag and that missing antler is just the way it grows each year.



And then I found this chap, with a herd of 12 hinds. They were happy enough to let me photograph them for a while:



But after five minutes they decided they'd had enough and took off in the most photograph-friendly fashion you could imagine!







I just wish they'd done it in better light! I spent three and half hours driving around in the pouring rain only to get home and find sunshine...

A trip to Inverness

I prepared for this one. I got the big lens out and kept my camera on the passenger seat all the way down the Strath Halladale road. What did I see? That's right, absolutely nothing! Two buzzards, which were little more than pinpricks in the sky, and a hedgehog which had hidden in the undergrowth by the time I'd stopped and jumped out of the car.

So it was more in hope than expectation that I set out from my hotel room early the following morning in search of the dolphins that can often be seen from the sea walls. As it turned out, I got a bit lost and ended up at Carnac Point instead, which is just to the west of the Kessock Bridge. No dolphins (surprise, surprise) because the tide was too low, but I had fun watching this grey heron:



They're not the most aerodynamic of birds:



Preparing for landing:



Landing gear engaged:



Touchdown!:



I attempted an artistic shot of the Kessock Bridge - this was my best effort:



I went up the Crask road on the way back. I had my camera on the front seat again, just in case there was a spectacular sunset over Ben Loyal, but the long lens was in the back because I thought with my luck there was no way I was going to see anything. Wrong. This was a couple of miles south of Altnaharra:





It's the rutting season for red deer and this stag was walking his hinds up the hill towards another group. I couldn't see the second stag, but I could certainly hear him - the two were roaring at each other:





That was that, or so I thought - it was so dark by the time I left the passing place I was pulled into that I had my headlights on. But no, a few miles past Altnaharra I found these two young red deer - and this is where I thanked Canon for image stabilisation! These shots were taken at 390mm focal length with a shutter speed of 1/60th and the only support was my elbows braced against the car window.

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.