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.

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)

Found the culprits!

New camera may arrive this afternoon, so fingers crossed...

When I took the wheelie bin up the drive this morning, the robin that lives in the gorse bushes at the side was happily chirping around and quite content to sit on a fence post 10 feet away and watch me lugging a full bin around very noisily, so when I went to get it back in at lunchtime I thought I'd take the camera up with me.

Could I find the little blighter? Could I heck. So I went down to the bird feeders by the garden gate and discovered the reason I've found them on the ground a couple of times, even when there's no wind:



Still, they don't seem to be scaring off the chaffinches (I counted 6 today) who just sit on the gate and wait for the starlings to finish: