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!

Common Terns and their chicks on tern rafts at Greenwich Ecology Park, London

As we are currently experiencing an unusual heatwave in the UK, I am not feeling much like wandering around in the hot sun with a heavyish camera and am, therefore, confined to barracks.  So, as I am guilty of not writing a blog for ages, I thought I would now get round to adding photographs of my new favourite birds - Common Terns - in my new favourite place - North Greenwich Ecology Park.  This is a very tiny nature reserve on the Greenwich Peninsular in London and very near to the O2 centre and the Emirates cable car that goes over the river Thames. 

I visited the park on a few occasions from the middle to end of June.  At the time there were plenty of adults and their chicks on several tern rafts that were floating in the middle of the lake.

From the bird hide that is nearest to the entrance to the park I saw this adult tern standing in front of a shelter on a small raft that was covered with pebbles.

There was another, much larger raft, with wooden edges and also with the central part covered with pebbles.  In this photograph there are two adult terns standing near the edge of the raft, with a chick walking down a sloping plank that leads to the water.

The adult birds were flying out of the park and fishing in the river Thames - bringing back small fish to feed both chicks and the adults that remained on the raft in order to look after the babies.  This tern was perched on the edge of the raft and has a poor little fish in it's beak.

The birds were constantly flying out and back in to the park.  Here an adult has just landed and has a fish in it"s beak ready to feed the chick that is standing on the pebbles in front of it.  There are 3 other hungry chicks on the left-hand side of the raft.

There was an adult tern with open beak on the 1st floor of the raft and several adults and chicks on the ground floor.

Here, the chick on the left with wide open beak was begging for food from the nearby adult.

A tern was just flying in with another fish-of-the-day while two companions were singing a duet on the lst floor of the raft.

It was more-or-less non-stop fish delivery during the time I was watching the birds.  Here, the bird with raised wings was feeding a juvenile while the other chicks were impatiently waiting for more to eat.

Yet another fish supplier has just landed on the edge of the raft.

A hard-working tern was just coming in to land, while another adult bird was sheltering in the shade under the raised part of the raft.  There were a lot of lovely white water lilies near the edge of the bank on the other side of the lake.

All the photos above were taken using a long zoom lens on my camera.  This was taken using a short zoom and shows the whole of the tern raft, plus a bird leaving the raft (just in front of the raised wooden bars) and a bird flying in (towards the top left of the photo and in front of the reeds, shrubs and grass on the far bank of the lake.

This is a view from the window of the hide with reeds in front of the window, water lilies at the edge of the lake and the tern raft in the middle of the lake.

There was a second bird hide at the other end of the lake, but there were a lot of tall reeds and flowers in front of the windows so the lake could not be seen.  However, in a gap between the foliage, I could see a tern with a fish in it's beak standing on top of the upright pole.  Obviously, there was a raft here that was much nearer to the hide, but the rest of it was out of view.

A tern stood facing forwards on the horizontal beam at the top of the raft.  I think that this is a very amusing pose!

Next time I visit the Ecology Park I expect that all the juvenile terns will have fledged and the rafts will be empty.  I must remember to definitely go back there again next year!