Encounters

On a still, grey, drizzly morning my daily walk took me northwards through the forestry at the back of the beach where, near the busy car park at the back of Dunrobin Castle, I met....

....a roe deer which, perhaps being thoroughly used to visitors, allowed me to approach to within a few metres before, gently and daintily, bounding away. 

When I reached the beach this gull was sitting just below last night's high-tide mark and was as warily willing as the deer to let me approach to within ten metres, not the normal behaviour of a gull. I think it's another juvenile kittiwake, perhaps part of the group we saw at Littleferry on Monday. Kittiwakes belong out at sea or on rocky cliffs and their presence along this coast is intriguing if not concerning.

The weather being not unlike winter, perhaps it wasn't surprising that, suddenly, a dozen or so curlews have returned from their summer on the moors, nor that we are suddenly seeing....

....small flocks of redshanks back along the tideline.

I thought for a moment this was a seal but when it dived it showed the very characteristic pointed tail of an otter. I sat and watched it for a few minutes as it hunted just off the edge of the rocks, and then....

....hauled itself up onto a boulder, something otters usually do either when they've finished hunting or in order to eat something, like a large fish, that they can't cope with in the water. Sadly,  the otter didn't last long as it was disturbed by a dog-walker who approached to within thirty metres with her border collie without spotting it - after which it slid off the rock and disappeared.