There's plenty of seaweed, much of it kelp, along the tidelines of the beaches below Dunrobin Castle, dumped there during the recent easterlies. It's ideal feeding for waders, and in previous years we've seen small flocks of them working it, but on Thursday, when I spent some time scanning the benches with my binoculars, the only wader I could find....
....was this lonely redshank.
I keep insisting that the number of shore birds we're seeing is significantly down on previous years. There is only the occasional curlew, we've a serious shortage of redshanks, the sanderlings seem to have gone AWOL, the turnstones are finding stones elsewhere, and the oystercatchers are all on holiday at Littleferry. Even the starlings are missing, as are the rock doves, a flock of which were here only a week or so ago.
Look up, though, and skein after skein of pink-footed geese is passing over, their numbers in the hundreds. Thank goodness that at least one species appears to be thriving.
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