We were on the beach below the town in time for low tide just after ten this morning, for a walk which provided us with a rare wealth of wildfowl. This included....
....a raft of about fifty eider swimming just offshore. When we saw them on Friday they were diving, all going down together and reappearing together but today....
....they were moving slowly in the same direction with both sexes occasionally stretching out their necks and raising there heads, all to a low but melodious grunting sound - presumably, this is some sort of courting ritual.
A little further along we saw, in close succession, a red-breasted merganser, as far as we could see, all on his own...,
....a goldeneye pair and....
....three guillemots.
Along the beach we found a pair of ringed plovers and then stopped to watch....
....as a flock of a dozen redshanks came in to land and start feeding on the seaweed but our presence worried them so, sadly, they....
....took off, the first to go demonstrating their capacity to take off almost vertically. We watched as they flew along the shore, passing....
....the eider before, at a safe distance from us, landing to resume their interrupted meal.
We were on the beach below the town in time for low tide just after ten this morning, for a walk which provided us with a rare wealth of wildfowl. This included....
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