Birds

You'd hardly know it reading through my posts, but actually my passion for nature began with birds. They don't figure very often in this blog because my photos of them are shite. I have an Olympus Tough, which does me fine for small things up close. But birds at a distance, forget it. 

However, if the bird is big enough and close enough, I can manage the odd passable smudge. Which is exactly what happened yesterday, when I glanced up through the branches and saw this

Straight off the card, uncropped and unaltered

Both images heavily cropped, but at least you can tell it's not a pigeon

Yup, that's a White-tailed Eagle and it was a lot lower than it looks in the photos - I could clearly hear it's wingbeats! I had a sudden thought and flipped the camera to video mode. Probably turn out shaky and shite, but may as well give it a go

I was quite pleased with that, not too shabby at all compared to my usual attempts. Then a second bird appeared, though by this time they were a good few hundred metres away. Once more I pointed the camera and hoped it would pick them up

Pretty poor I know. Most of the White-tailed Eagles I see are singletons, hence I was happy to capture this moment, brief and shaky though it is. Pete, if you're reading this buddy I'm sorry they didn't appear whilst you were up here. All I can say is that they were 'marvellous'!

But eagles are expected up here, not that this detracts from the thrill of seeing them, but the next bird I saw was undoubtedly 'Bird of the Day' and a Skye tick for me too.

Fully zoomed but uncropped. Any ideas yet?

 

Should at least be able to tell it's a wader by now

It's a pixelated to the max Purple Sandpiper!

Considering the amount of rocky coastline around here, Purps are only infrequently recorded from Skye. There were three of them on these rocks, unfortunately all flushed as I continued around the shoreline beneath the cliff, but what a great bird they are! I still remember my first which was stood on a tiny rock just offshore a couple of miles south of Ayr beach. That was about 1988, I think. Tough little birds, I wish I encountered them more frequently than I do. Guess I need to spend a bit more time rummaging around rocky headlands, they're hardly likely to turn up at the bird table in the garden...

I was bemused to find lots of iced over rockpools. I'm not sure I've ever seen that before

Rockpooling is far less appealing when you have to smash through the ice first

A Woodcock, three Golden Plovers and five separate Common Snipe were flushed as I walked across the moors, all fleeing the hard weather. I bet they really appreciated me bundling through the middle of them. Today I watched a Woodcock flying up the road in full sunshine, there have been quite a few found dead recently. Frozen ground is no fun for birds such as these.

That's a lava dyke jutting into the sea. Skye's geology abounds with such volcanic features