Saturday, January 11, 2020

Offshore Birds

We woke to a wet day but, being accustomed to such things after our years on Ardnamurchan, we donned our wet-weather gear and, because the tide is approaching springs and the beach is now covered for most of the daylight hours, walked along the top of the rock embankment between the beach and the golf course, thinking that, with the lack of beach for the waders, we'd have nothing to look at but grey sky and grey sea but were....

....quickly and pleasantly surprised at how much there was to watch, including this trio of guillemots which kept pace with us a few yards offshore, diving regularly to feed but coming up together for a few seconds on the surface, and....

....a very smart male red-breasted merganser.

Then what looked like a distant mass of floating seaweed turned out be a raft of eider ducks which, by eider duck standards, seemed to be getting on remarkably well with each other.

We feel very fortunate indeed to have all this wildlife to watch even on a grey, cold, rainy early January day.

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