I've always enjoyed the company of Wheatears on the fells, as they perched on the rocks and watched you go by. I've not been to see them much this year, but I found a couple on top of the moors at the weekend. Obviously, they disappeared when I first turned up, but by the time I'd poured a coffee and drank it, they were back.
It turned out there was an entire family (about 6 as far as I could gather as pairs were constantly shuffling in the air). The summit cairn was popular, including with the ever present Mipit infiltrators and photobombers.
I've never seen a Wheatear levitate before, though.
I think they were attracted by the sheer numbers of cranefly up there - you can still see some legs sticking out of her beak!
"Go and see if that pesky photographer has gone yet." "Nope, he's still hiding behind the cairn!"
There's a fabulous fencepost, but no, apparently Linnets prefer balancing on bits of wire.
Meanwhile, at the bottom of the moors, you get these
Don't be fooled, I had to use ISO 5000 to get even a half-reasonable shutter speed and at that I needed the bird to stay reasonably still to get these shots ... and this was on a bright sunny day. Talk about where the sun don't shine ... Dippers love it there!!
Both the resident pair were present, but I can't tell them apart. This one was actually singing, although you could barely tell from looking at it and you could barely hear it above the noise of the river.
I tried getting them swimming but didn't have the shutter speed! I had to settle for this one extracting a Caddisfly larva it had already caught. One of these days I'll get one in a brighter spot!
It did at least pose in a nice spot for me!