Goosander in Newhaven and wading birds in Cramond, Scotland

In August, while attending the Edinburgh Festival, I took a second day off to visit a couple of small towns on the edge of the Firth of Forth in East Lothian and just a short bus journey from the centre of Edinburgh.  It was a cloudy dull day, but not raining.

The first place I called at was Newhaven, near Leith, and below is a view of the harbour.  At first, I thought that the birds in the harbour were all gulls.  But I was mistaken!

Much to my delight, there was a Goosander!  One minute it was there and the next it wasn't as it kept diving for food.  Luckily I managed to get this photograph of it and have been told that it is a juvenile.

I was with a couple of friends and we had lunch in a pub in Newhaven.  Afterwards one went back to Edinburgh to see a show and one stayed with me.  We got a bus along the coast to the next small town and then walked along the towpath to Cramond, where there was a huge beach.

There is a long row of anti-submarine pylons across the beach between the mainland and a small island that was used for defence purposes during WWII.  Many gulls and wading birds were wandering around on the wet sand.

 An Oystercatcher was doing a balancing act - standing on one leg and stretching out it's black-and-white wing.

Two Curlews with long curved beaks were searching for food.

A group of Redshanks were paddling in a stream that ran across the beach..

Northern Gannets on Bass Rock, Firth of Forth, Scotland

In August I went with friends to the Edinburgh Festival.  I again took a day off while there in order to get away from the crowds of humans and instead see crowds of birds - thousands of Northern Gannets that cover Bass Rock in the summer in order to breed and have their chicks - guga.

This is a view of Bass Rock taken from North Berwick on the mainland.  The rock is white with the Gannets that cover it for a few months in the summer.  The photo was actually taken later in the day, after our boat ride, as the sun came out for five minutes.

It was actually a dismal rainy day and we were on an open boat!  We were very determined to go on the journey to the rock.  However, when we got to the rock, it stopped raining so I was able to get my camera out and take some photographs.  The building near the lighthouse used to be a prison many years ago.  The white blobs are all Gannets!

I managed to get a couple of close-up photographs of Gannets with fluffy guga chicks.  The guga in the photo below is all huddled up and looks a bit cold and miserable.

This guga looks nice and fluffy and is much happier.

The birds were everywhere.  It was a very impressive sight and very deafening!

Redshank at Barnes Wetland Centre

In June I took my camera for a walk in Barnes Wetland Centre.  It was a sunny day and I had a great time there.

When I visited the Peacock bird hide, from which there is a view over the large lagoon, there was a group of birdwatchers gathered together at one side of the hide with their scopes and cameras with very long lenses trained on one area.  The excitement was that there was a lone Redshank on the site!  They very kindly pointed it out to me - letting me look down the scope and one even took a photo of the landscape on his mobile phone so that I could locate the area for myself.

I was not surprised that I had a hard time finding the lonely Redshank as it was almost hidden in the shrubbery!

The Redshank was some way in the distance, the photographs were taken using a long lens and then have been quite heavily cropped.

The birders sat and watched the one and only Redshank for some time and it just kept sitting there behind the shrubbery.  Eventually they gave up and went over to the other side of the hide and started watching something else.  I thought I would take one last look at the bird before I left and it had actually stood up, was preening it's feathers and gave me a view of it's red legs.

Then it very kindly put it's head up so I could take this photo.

The Redshank then walked off across the lagoon until it was even further away from the hide and posed gracefully between some plants that were growing in the water.  There was a Lapwing on the land in the background.  Both birds are reflected in the water.

I had gone to Barnes hoping to see a Redshank, but did not realise that there would only be one visiting the site that day.  I was incredibly lucky to have seen it and have to thank the lovely birdwatchers in the hide for pointing it out to me.

Blackbird sunning itself in the North Greenwich Ecology Park

During one of my visits to the North Greenwich Ecology Park in the summer I came across a blackbird that was sitting on the boardwalk.  It's beak was open and it was panting.  It was a very hot sunny day and I think it was trying to cool down.  I tried to stay still and take some photographs without disturbing it.  This did not last very long!

The blackbird could obviously hear the clicking of my camera and flew up into a tree and tried to conceal itself in the leaves.

I would assume that it would have been cooler in the shade of the tree than on the ground - so perhaps it was doing something else on the boardwalk?  Was it sunbathing?  I wonder!