Aerobatics

We walked the links at Littleferry this morning, empty except for a single dog-walker, to find the sky to the north a brilliant blue in contrast to....

....the threat of rain to the south across the entrance to Loch Fleet. The tide was racing in, rapidly covering a shingle bank over which....

....a hundred or so medium-sized waders were performing synchronised aerobatics, perhaps to warm themselves up in an increasingly chill wind.

Identifying them - something I feel such an urge to do, as if it really mattered - was difficult but....

....after they had landed on one of the banks a close look at the two on the left of this picture, which have orange legs and fairly long bills, suggested they were redshanks. However....

....this picture reveals some ringed plovers on the nearer shingle bank, though I cannot tell whether they joined in the aerobatics.

There was precious little in the way of other bird life: a few cormorants preening themselves on the far shore of the loch, some ducks, gulls, and a dead guillemot....

....on the high-tide mark of a beach rapidly disappearing under the advancing waves of a spring tide high enough to erode the dunes at the back of the beach. We finished our tour of Littleferry's varied environments with....

....a wander through the pine woods.