The sea was so calm today. Not many things make me feel as good as a day by the sea.

Today I went to the a nice part of the coast to watch birds. I saw a kingfisher, lots of widgeon, pochard, teal, mallard, goldeneye, eider, velvet scoter, long-tailed duck, canada geese, barnacle geese, white fronted geese from Siberia for the first time, pink-footed goose, slavonian grebe, cormorant, tufted duck, pied wagtail, house sparrow, crow, jackdaw, mediterranean gull (1st winter to be precise), black-headed gull, common gull, lesser black-backed gull, greater black-backed gull, herring gull, starling, redshank, bar-tailed godwit, turnstone, grey plover, oystercatcher, lapwing, curlew, red-breasted merganser, goosander... Maybe more that I cannot recall right now.

An amusing little interlude occurred -

The sea wall is covered in that beautiful deep yellow lichen Xanthoria Parietina. I was leaning against it and staring out at the gentle waves when a slightly worried looking gentleman walked towards me asing if I had seen a black labrador who had just run away from him. I said I was sorry, I hadn't seen it. The man suggested that if I did see it then I should take it's collar. 'Just take her by her collar' he said. 'Like this' while demonstrating the action of taking a dog by it's collar with index and middle finger. He said that he was going to back in that direction >>>> and that then if I saw anyone cycling past in the same direction I could tell the cyclist what he looked like and that they could then look for him and tell him that I had the dog and then he could walk back towards where I was. It seemed quite funny though I of course hoped he would find his dog. He told me his wife had gone in the other direction with the chocolate labrador who was better behaved and had not run away. I said ok, I would follow out his instruction if I should happen to see the dog. We then briefly talked about birds as he had binoculars around his neck too. Everyone today seemed to be looking for the white fronted geese from Siberia but neither of us had seen them yet. After a few minutes he said 'Anyway, I can't really talk about mediterranean gulls any longer because the wife and the dog are the priority. I had better be off.' A few minutes later once the man was out of sigh I saw a lady with a black and a brown labrador. As she came towards me I pointed at the black one and enquired if it happened to be the dog who had run away. 'Yes!' she said, 'Never go bird-watching with this dog because she knows when you're watching something else and have your guard down and that's when she takes her chance!' Then she told me that the dog had run to the houses at the other side of the river, had gone into someone's house and was being fed on sausage rolls. At this I laughed until she looked quite cross and said 'It's not funny! He will never forget that, now every time we try to take him out he will think that if he runs away he will get sausage rolls.' I met them again later and pointed out the white fronted geese (from Siberia) to them and they seemed quite happy about that.

With GoGo <3
Ardnamurchan last month.
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