From a distance the barley stubble in the field just across the Golspie Burn from our house may look empty of life but often it's alive with....
....rock doves, more than we have seen in the past couple of years. They've become quite used to the human and dog traffic along the old coast track, staying - at least partly - hidden until we're quite close, before rising....
....in a dense mass to move a few tens of metres further along the field.
The truly wild rock dove, which is what these are, is relatively rare, being found only on the coasts of northern Scotland and Ireland. Unfortunately for them, their half-sibling, the urban pigeon, is embarrassingly abundant so the wild rock dove is lumped in with them as 'green' - 'common' - when their conservation status is calculated.
In some ways, therefore, it's good to see so many of them but in normal circumstances this abundance of good food should attract predators, such as peregrines: of them this area is sadly lacking.
From a distance the barley stubble in the field just across the Golspie Burn from our house may look empty of life but often it's alive with....
In Devon, we have the Stock Dove, which at first looks similar to the Rock Dove; however, as beautifully depicted in your photograph, the Rock Dove posesses the white wedge of rump feathers which the Stock Dove doesn't have.
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