Brora Waders

We drove to Brora this morning to avail ourselves of the one of the few services which Golspie lacks - a petrol station - and while we were there, in bright sunshine and light winds, we took a walk along....

....Brora's long, sandy beach. It's a great beach if you just want to stretch your legs but I was hoping for something interesting in the way of wildlife, and the only sighting we had along the length of the beach was of a small group of oystercatchers. However, as we were on the point of turning back we spotted....

....just beyond the point where a small burn runs down across the beach, four gulls - at right in this picture - and a mass of much smaller waders - to the left in the picture.

We managed to approach to within fifty metres of the waders without disturbing them, from where we could clearly see that this mass of birds consisted of ringed plovers which had organised themselves so they surrounded a large flock of a different wader species, almost all of which were asleep with their heads tucked under their wings.

It was difficult to identify these birds with any confidence until we were home and could look at the photos where we found....

....one individual which was awake - and it had the characteristic beak of a sanderling.

Which leaves an intriguing question: why do the ringed plovers appear to surround and stand guard while the sanderlings sleep?