{"id":1253,"date":"2013-10-22T18:55:18","date_gmt":"2013-10-22T19:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=1253"},"modified":"2013-10-22T18:55:18","modified_gmt":"2013-10-22T19:55:18","slug":"birds-of-a-different-feather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=1253","title":{"rendered":"Birds of a (different) feather"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There was something quite sinister about the way the rooks rose from Slains Castle as I approached.\u00a0 <\/span>A ruined castle with associations with Dracula and memories of Hitchcock’s chilling film.\u00a0 The Birds certainly added to the atmosphere.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>There was no one else around, just me and the birds.<\/p>\n

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I am just back from a few days holiday in the Black Isle.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>One day I went for a walk with Lily the dog along the shore, near Cromarty.\u00a0 <\/span>There was a strong wind blowing, whipping up the usually sheltered waters of the Cromarty Firth.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>A flock of rooks had settled in a nearby field. They saw us coming, and rose up over the water, just like at Slains.\u00a0 <\/span>it had been raining quite hard as I set out and I did not have my camera with me, but my phone came into its own and I captured this shot of the mouth of the firth with a oil supply boat running for shelter at Invergordon as the rooks circled.<\/p>\n

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It was gulls that suddenly rose up at Muir of Ord.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>We were at a dog agility fun day, and all of a sudden the gulls took off.\u00a0 <\/span>I have no idea where they came from or what had stirred them up, but they certainly made an interesting picture with the hills of Sutherland behind.<\/p>\n

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But it was not just flocks of birds that drew my attention during our autumn holiday.\u00a0 <\/span>I was focussing on a dawn picture of the headland (called North Soutor) at the mouth of the Cromarty Firth.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The colours were delightful and I found the little tree interesting.\u00a0 <\/span>It was then that a bird, one of the bigger gulls, I think, flew into the picture – and added somewhat to the composition.<\/p>\n

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For several days I had been watching a grey heron who clearly claimed our part of the seashore at Cromarty as his own.\u00a0 <\/span>In the end, I caught him against the rising sun, standing on a weed covered sewage pipe.<\/p>\n

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I have been reading that there is a decline in the Oystercatcher population.\u00a0 <\/span>Certainly there were not all that many on the Cromarty beach that October week,\u00a0 just three that I saw.\u00a0 H<\/span>ere are two of them.<\/p>\n

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Perhaps it’s cheating, but I could not resist this bird photograph!\u00a0\u00a0 T<\/a><\/span>he Beach Cafe<\/a> at Rosemarkie is well worth a visit.\u00a0 <\/span>On the\u00a0 tables outside you will find these “birds of prey” watching over the beach.<\/p>\n

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If you would like to see more of my photographs from my Black isle holiday, have a look here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was something quite sinister about the way the rooks rose from Slains Castle as I approached.\u00a0 A ruined castle with associations with Dracula and memories of Hitchcock’s chilling film.\u00a0 The Birds certainly added to the atmosphere.\u00a0\u00a0 There was no one else around, just me and the birds. I am just back from a few…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-further","category-crudencountry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1253"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1263,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253\/revisions\/1263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}