We walked south along a very quiet beach this morning watching the few waders visible exploiting the opportunities of a falling tide, seeing oystercatchers, redshanks (left), turnstones (right) and....
....ringed plovers., but....
....came back along the golf course where the skylarks have been busy for some weeks. The males have established their territories so all the chasing around that was going on was probably for the benefit of the later-arriving females.
Our morning was made, however, when we spotted these two running along the path in front of us. It was a pair of wheatears, the greyer male at top left and the female at bottom right.
It's wonderful to see them as they, like the swallows, are one of the true long-distance migrants, having spent their winter in Central Africa. Most migrate north to their summer breeding grounds in northern and western Britain. Our experience on Ardnamurchan was that, like the skylarks, the males arrived first to establish their territories....
....but these two must have arrived at almost the same time.
Like the stonechats they raced us along the sea wall watched....
....by the stonechat pair that have been here all winter. They can't have been too pleased at the arrival of competition.
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