Original House Martin nests

A house martin looks out from deep inside its cliff nest; the original site for these birds to build their nests before we built houses with eaves for them - artificial rock overhangs.

This colony built their nests in the cave left of the sea stack, at the back of a sheltered bay on the north sea, near Aberdeen.

A closer view shows that it is more of a large overhang of rock rather than a deep cave.

Their are five completed nests in this photograph, and a few that have either fallen off or are only just begun to be built. There were twelve complete nests altogether. Each nest is well placed in a corner or rock within the whole larger overhang. A perfect safe site for a colony.

A house martin looks out from its nest, the entrance hole is open onto the rock roof, like they are on buildings.

Then the bird dropped out of the nest and whizzed by, too quickly to photograph without flash - which I prefer not to use on wildlife.

Spring Ptarmigan

The air has warmed up rapidly in Scotland over the first weeks of May and the winter snow is melting away. I have been on several hills during this time, studying ptarmigan Lagopus muta and although the cock birds can be quite vocal when displaying to and chasing neighbouring birds, when quiet, they can be very inconspicuous. There were six cocks in the area of the Cairngorms shown in the above photograph, all with a hen, one with two hens.

In spring, the cock and hen ptarmigan are coloured differently. The cock birds have grey backs and necks but retain their bright white winter feathers on their bellies. The hens moult into a mottled brown, yellow and russet colour. Both merge well into the rocky landscape and I only saw them because they were so active; the cocks disputing over territiry boundaries and guarding their hens from neghbouring cocks.

The hens' plumage merged extremely well with the dappled colouring of the heath plants; in this case mostly short wind-clipped heather. Soon they will rely on their colouring to hide on their nests in the heather which is too short to hide beneath.

The cocks' grey plumage blended well with the lichens that grow on the mounatin boulders. While the hens are incubating, they sit on nearby prominent look-out posts, usually a rock, so they too are perfectly coloured for their duty. And while the hens are incubating both sexes can be very inconspicuous indeed.