Swallows!

Well, today was good fun! The weather for the past 2 days has been pretty minging, with torrential downpours, heavy rain and patches of beautiful sunshine (very much like Scotland really!). Today however was much nicer, which was just as well since we had to test our underwater survey equipment today down at the pier. To give some background, this isn't a particularly entertaining job, as the kit basically gets put in the sea and then stays there for an hour after which time we pull it up and go through the images etc. to make sure it's worked then repeat it all again. Fortunately for me though, the pier has a lot of birds around it, so I got to spend a good 2-3 hours sitting and practicing my photography with a family of incredibly obliging swallows. There are loads of swallows here actually, with a lot of families nesting in the car tyres they hang by the water's edge as bumpers for the boats coming in and out, so there is always plenty of activity. Today though, one young swallow decided not to wait around in its nest to be fed, and instead took up residence on the edge of the pier and on a mooring rope a couple of metres from where I was sitting to keep an eye on the equipment. I'm pretty pleased with the photos I got (indulge me, there are quite a few!):


We're going to be testing the kit again tomorrow at the pier so I might spend a bit more time with the cormorants and terns rather than the swallows, but we'll see! The swallows are being incredibly obliging at the moment after all.