Lovely colours at Sanaigmore

Lovely colours at Sanaigmore yesterday.  We walked east from the Gallery along the shore, eventually reaching what Marie McEwan calls 'The Mushroom Rocks', which are huge boulders that have been undercut by the sea into all sorts of weird shapes.  The tide was too high for us to really see them properly, but they are still impressive, with the waves surging round them.  You can easily appreciate the abrasive power of the water that has created the formations. When the tide is right it is possible to walk right round some of them.

Birdlife on these remote rocky shores is actually quite limited.  A flock of around twenty Ringed plover flew off the sandy bit of the beach when we first arrived, and Rock pipits constantly complained about our intrusion into their airspace as we moved along. A large, dark winged wader with a white rump flew out of one of the wee coves, but it was a long way off before I caught up with it with the binoculars.  Probably a Greenshank, but only probably.  Out at sea, a steady stream of small parties of Auks were all flying right to left and there were a few very distant small gulls, almost certainly Kittiwakes.  Closer to the shore there was a steady movement of individual Herring, Common and Great Black backed Gulls, again the vast majority of which were flying from east to west.  Back at the Outback there was a huge flock of barnacle geese in the fields over the road, and a small group of around six Twite bounced past.  Some Chough called.  It was a great day.  Coffee was good too...

Carl