Goosanders

We drove to Littleferry this morning for a walk in the woods to find the car parks empty on what can perfectly be described as....

....a very Scottish day.

The damp woods were teeming with fungi and moulds but the highlight of our wander was when we left the forestry to walk beside the entrance to Loch Fleet where....

....a shingle bank left exposed by high tide had four large ducks - or perhaps geese - resting on it. They were unusual enough for a grey heron to have flown across the loch to inspect them and....

....they certainly weren't a species that I could identify immediately. Once home, the very red legs of the two males and the pointed bills suggested they were goosanders, a species we've seen here before on only a couple of occasions.

We then walked along an utterly deserted beach where a steady northeaster was building a heavy surf. We met no-one on the beach and, during the rest of the walk, only three other people.