Stuart Rae

Pick of bird shots - Scotland 2017

I have returned from my trip to Scotland this year and catalogued the photographs I took. It is always good to look back through such images and reflect on just how successful a trip has been. Here I have posted ten of the bird shots that I like, for various reasons. The first, above, is of a kittiwake flying along a clifftop, with a pink bloom of out-of-focus thrift flower heads in the foreground.

Another kittiwake. I always enjoy a day, or more, at the sea cliffs watching the seabirds that breed there. Most kittiwakes nest on bare, weather-washed rock, but this one had settled on a bright yellow lichen-rich cliff, with a tuft of thrift below the nest.

A day of soft overcast sunshine gave good light for catching the detail in this fulmar's plumage, without washing out the white as happens under bright sunshine.

The soft tones of grey on this cock ptarmigan's back feathers illustrate how well their camouflage fits with the lichens on the adjacent rock. It is bird's profile that we see first, and only because I deliberately took the shot from a specific angle to emphasise the point.

The same ptarmigan's mate was sitting low next to rocks nearby, and again her colouring fits that of the lichens, but also the brown of the heath she was sitting on. This time I took the shot to conceal her profile.

I was studying greenshank in the northern Highlands and this one was feeding in a tidal creek on the sea shore, a few kilometres from its nesting grounds up on the nearby moors.

While watching, or rather listening, for grasshopper warblers near a reed bed a pair of bearded tits came close by. They just appeared then disappeared, such is their behaviour and the difficulty in seeing them in the tall dense reeds the live in. This is the female. I never did see any grasshopper warblers.

This is the male bearded tit. Both birds seemed to be deliberately sitting high on the reed stems to preen in the sunshine after a shower of rain.

This male reed bunting also came out and sat high in the reeds after the shower. Although he was there to sing over his territory.

Not far away, on another sunny day, this splendid male yellow bunting was singing from the lichen-covered roof of an old building. Blue and yellow always go well together.