Brora Beach

Yesterday might have been winter, with a vicious westerly gusting over gale force and the temperature struggling to reach 14C - this while most of the country complained of the heat and not having enough factor 50. The conditions didn't prevent us taking a walk dressed, as befitted the occasion, in full wet-weather gear, which indicated its displeasure at being used at this time of year by leaking.

By this morning the wind had dropped so we were able to take a pleasant walk along the immaculate, and almost deserted sands at Brora. Perhaps because of the recent weather, there was little to see beyond a seal, a couple of cormorants, three pied wagtails, some gulls and....

....along just one short section of the beach, large numbers of sea potato tests.

However, there is one highlight to walking along Brora beach at this time of year, the presence of a colony of rather special terns. While we see terns along the beaches at Golspie, they tend to be sandwich terns whereas Brora boasts an active colony of the much more famous arctic terns, the ones which fly over 40,000 miles each year in a migration which takes them to Antarctica.