Bird Gatherings at Littleferry

To Littleferry this morning for what we're trying to make a regular weekly visit, to find the sands at the entrance of Loch Fleet crowded with upward of two hundred oystercatchers - such collections being called, apparently, a 'parcel' of oystercatchers. There seems to be a great gathering of this species at this time of year following a summer of independent pairs rearing their young but we've never seen this number before. 

As we walked round towards the beach we, and small flotillas of eider being washed in by the tide, were treated to a magnificent display of synchronised flying over the mouth of the loch by a group of waders which....

....look to me like dunlin. Certainly this is a time of year when species like this, common in small groups along the beach during last winter but absent though the summer, are returning.

Further aslong the beach we topped to watch some gulls work themselves up into a frenzy of feeding, perhaps on a shoal of bait fish, to be joined by one or two gannets (top right) - which we were so pleased to see as the only gannet we've found here until now had been washed up dead.

Littleferry beach may have been bright with birds but it was as good as deserted of humans - we saw only three in the time we wandered along it - which gave one member of our party the ideal opportunity to indulge in a trick which her maternal grandfather used to perform.