More stags

Between Badanloch and the Garvault hotel this time.





One of these days I'll get up there in decent light...

WOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Four of my robin pictures have been accepted by Alamy!!!

Alamy is what I'd term a 'proper' stock agency, i.e. it pays contributors a decent rate rather than the few cents per picture the microstock agencies pay. Look in almost any women's glossy magazine in the UK and you'll probably see an alamy.com credit somewhere.

I don't actually care whether they sell or not - Alamy thinks I'm good enough. That's made my morning :o)

Adverse weather conditions

We've got snow. Lots of snow:



That was the track up to Polouriscaig this morning. I'd gone up in search of deer (much as I wanted to drive down the Strath and look for stags, I doubt my car would have made it up the drive!), but half way up the hill more snow clouds started rolling in and I had to turn back. I saw a fox, but didn't get my camera to my eye before it had legged it, so the only life I managed to capture on film was a rather chilly sheep:



I retreated to the garden and shot birds instead. My little robin is looking considerably less tatty:



Though he's somewhat put out by the presence of another two robins in the garden - they were having a bust-up on the shed roof when I got there, but they're so quick I couldn't catch it. He was eyeing up the feeders:



Now, I've always read that robins won't eat from bird feeders, they'll only eat off the ground. My robins obviously haven't read that book:





It's been a bumper day for chaffinches as well, I counted 12 at one point:



And the trusty RSPB bird identifier tells me this is a dunnock:



Something that looked remarkably like a blue tit landed on the shed roof at one point, but didn't stay long enough for me to get a proper look at it. It'll be the first one I've seen here if it was, so I shall keep my eyes peeled.

More snow due over the next couple of days, so more garden bird photos on their way, possibly!

When you're smiling...

Two posts in one day (don't get used to this!), but I've got some more pictures that I never got round to posting up.

There weren't as many seals around this time, the bay was calm so most of them were out at sea, but I did spend a while photographing these three - love the smiles:



Since the sandy side beach was totally empty, I went for a walk along it. Seals are curious creatures and I soon had an escort:



Or two...:



I think pupping is more or less over for the year. Now that I know what's where, I can hopefully get out and about more in October and November next year. I've heard about a pupping beach that may be closer than the one I was visiting, but I'm not sure how easy it is to get to.

The robin's been in a fight I think - he was looking very tatty:





Maybe the sparrows have been beating him up again:

Otterly fantastic

Sorry for abandoning you through November, but it's my busiest month and I barely got time to pick up my camera other than to photograph beads.

No pictures in this post either, but I wanted to report some progress in my quest to photograph otters. I have a veg patch with a view - it's in our bottom field, so it looks out over the bay. On Sunday morning I was happily getting on with digging it over (my neighbour kindly drove two tons of well-rotted manure down there for me over the summer and it needs to go on) when something caught my eye in the water. It was a flat calm day and the tide was high and there were two otters fishing in the shallows. I watched them for about half an hour.

After lunch today the sky was blue and all the work that really, really HAD to be done was done, so I went back to my manure-spreading. The veg patch is in the bottom corner of the field, next to our fence. There's a steep bank and our neighbour on the other side has fenced about 20 feet of flat ground off for vegetables before there's another, flatter, bank. In this flatter bank is a large rabbit hole, which the dogs always go and investigate when we're down there. Today I saw what I thought was a cat sitting in the grass beside it. My brain was telling me there was something odd about the shape of its head, so I looked again - and saw the second otter emerging from the hole! The first otter bounced off past the neighbour's gate and down to the beach and the second one disappeared back down the hole - so I think we may be on for cubs next year!

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...