Apologies for the radio silence

...but in the two months since I last posted, I've barely had time to pick up a camera unless it was to shoot pictures of beads.

I saw the otter again yesterday whilst walking the dogs - you guessed it, no camera. And, worse, the dogs chased it and caught up with it, though it swam off with no apparent injuries, a ginormous fish still firmly clamped in its mouth. Today I walked the dogs in the field and then went back down to the beach with my camera. No otter, but plenty of oystercatchers:





And it wouldn't be a beach birds set without a ringed plover in there somewhere!



I think this is a female wheatear - I'm checking with knowledgeable people:



On the way back up to the house I took the opportunity to photograph my favourite sheep. This is Polly, she belongs to my neighbours and is due to lamb any day now:



I'm beginning to love sheep portraits - should I be getting worried??

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?

Back to the beach

In an attempt to shift some weight, I've decided to walk down to the far end of the beach and back every morning. The camera comes with me of course, you can guarantee that the day I don't take it there'll be four otters doing a synchronised swimming display in the burn...

I've often noticed holes in the sand as I walk along the hard sand where the tide's gone out and wondered what made them. Here's the answer - they're air pockets trapped under the sand:



Up towards the dunes I saw an earwig:



And I can't go down to that beach without taking a picture of a ringed plover, can I?!

Back on the beach

The first thing I had to do today was get past the gate guardians, AKA next door's pigs, who'd decided to have a nap at the top of the shared drive:



Over the other side of the road, there was a buzzard hunting on the hill:



One day I'll walk up there and sit and watch for it - maybe I can get a bit closer! On the path down to the beach I was thrilled to see that the bank, which had been washed smooth in the rain, had fresh otter prints on it:



Today I crossed over the Armadale Burn and went to the far end of the beach. There are pied wagtails down there:



But what I wasn't expecting to see was a ringed plover chick shoot out from nearly under my feet and start legging it towards the dunes. I followed it with my longest lens and when it darted behind a hillock and didn't come out, crept up on it:

Back on the beach

After being stuck in all week due to volume of work and weather, I was determined to get out this morning. It was dry but overcast and had rained heavily the night before, so I stuck on my walking boots and went down to the beach (no tales of jeopardy and mortal danger today I'm afraid!).

The tide was out, which made it a great day to explore round the rocks and rock pools that scatter the edge of the beach. This one made me think of a giant rock caterpillar that had crawled out of the sea to drink at the rockpool:



No scrambling about on them though, because they're covered in seaweed. I think this is serrated wrack, but I'm still trying to make sure of that:



I went down to the edge of the water and watched the gulls for a bit:





The rain had swelled the Allt Beag and the Armadale Burn and they'd cut bigger channels down the beach than usual:



And then the weather started to clear. The next two photos were taken from the same spot within a minute of each other - just pointing in different directions:





Caithness and Sutherland do big skies very well:





And finally, I can't go down to that beach without photographing a ringed plover, can I? Today's mission was to get a good shot of one on the move, since they're the coastal equivalent of Road Runner:

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:

It's there, I know it's there...

Firstly, I'm proud to reveal the owner of those eggs:



- a ringed plover. It's a pretty rotten shot, but they're not very big and they can run like the clappers!

This is where I think the otter lives:



If you look at the bank, you can make out paw prints. I've spoken to some more of our neighbours now and they say they think there is one there, but there's certainly one at the other beach at the end of the road. I haven't been down there yet, so that's next on the list of places to explore. The downside is that for the best chance of seeing one, you need to go down there around 5am or earlier, and I'm not the best mornings person in the world...

I was looking at natural patterns last night. It was about half past nine when I got to the beach and the sun had lowered over the headland. So we got stripes:



and we got waves in the sand: