Birds Along the Beach

On a still, grey morning, with the sun struggling to break through high cloud, I walked the coast path towards Dunrobin Castle, finding....

....the cormorant colony on its favourite rocks from which, inevitably and steadily, they were being evicted by the rising tide.

Along the tideline the redshanks were busy in the piles of seaweed washed up over the last few weeks but found themselves in unequal competition with....

....what must have been most of Golspie's chattering jackdaw population - we'd noticed, and have been enjoying their absence from the garden. There must have been something very special in the weed as, whenever they were disturbed, mostly by a passing dog, they simply....

....took off - noisily - circled out to sea and then came back to land on a different stretch of weed.

Meanwhile, high above, in further evidence of the changing seasons, the pink-footed geese were settling in to the pattern of their winter's daily migration, north in the morning and back south again for the overnight roost. At a much lower level small birds, ranging from flocks of twenty or more down to isolated pairs, were on the move, all headed south, following the swallows, of which there are now only occasional remnants left. The only birds I could identify were in a large flock which had settled briefly in an oak tree, and they gave me a surprise: they were chaffinches.