Findhorn Bay Pt.3

OSPREY TIME! Probably the best bit of my holiday. We were wandering had been on the beach on the other side of the bay to the village after getting the taxi across, and so we were standing at the shore hoping the taxi hadn't forgotten we needed picked up. We'd been sitting for about 5 minutes when I saw this great big bird rise from behind the Scots Pines.

Finally! A good, fairly close picture of an Osprey. Didn't stop there though. It flew further away form us towards where the bay opens out into the Moray Firth and started its search for fish out there. Took a few shots, nothing worth posting on here though. A gull decided to mob the fairly harmless Osprey just because that's what gulls do. Here's a few not so great pictures of that.

So at this point I was thinking, "I've probably got the best shots I'm going to get of an Osprey," and turned off my camera. About a minute later, this great big bird dropped out the sky, made a nice big splash and then began to rise very slowly out of the water. It had caught a fish. Best. Holiday. Ever. Got my camera back out and started snapping away. In the following sequence of pictures you'll see how hard it was for the Osprey to gain altitude with what turned out to be a flouder (the flat fish); not the most aerodynamic fish. It was funny this happened because the day before I'd been reading in David Attenborough's The Life of Birds about how the Osprey turns the fish to face forwards to use it's shape which is supposed to be streamlined in water so that it is more streamlined in the air. Despite this, the fish still produces a lot of drag. Anyway, have a lot at the pictures.

You can pretty clearly see the fish in this next shot...

And away it went after giving me such an amazing opportunity...

Not much can quite equal that but I don't have very many pictures left so I'll just stick them in here!

From a great bird, to a green bird. The Greenfinch.

Some sort of Grasshopper. Plenty of them about, but this one made it especially easy to photograph as it sat in the middle of the path for me.

The last sunset pic, I promise...

Last of all, a blurry picture of what I think were some Dunlin flying out to the firth.

Thanks again for stopping to have a look!