Ythan Estuary, farewell to the Terns

A fruitless visit to the Ythan Estuary when I went looking for Skuas, just too late in the season. Only a small number of Common Terns and less Sandwich Terns remained and none at the ternery. The Skuas, Arctic, Pomarine and Great Skuas are usually found harassing the terns trying to get them to drop or regurgitate their fish, but with so few it wouldn't be worthwhile. I'll need to find somewhere with a large tern and gull roost like Lunan Bay or Kinnaber. I stayed around and photographed the last of the terns and anything else of interest. The other few photos were taken at Keptie Pond while I was avoiding the cold winds on the beach on Friday. (Must sort out the script I used here which appears to have sharpened the photos while resizing them).

Grey Seal with net injury, Ythan Estuary, click here for video  it did swim downstream with the group. This is the second Grey Seal I've filmed at Newburgh with a neck injury, the last one looked to have a large wound caused by a plastic lid which I later found was probably a frisbee, the type with a round hole in it.

Grey Seals, part of the healthy masses, click here for video  there could be as many as one thousand Grey and Common Seals in the large group on the north bank

Common Tern, Ythan Estuary

With a small fish caught in shallow water at low tide

I just couldn't get any terns at the point of entry. They weren't getting many fish and had many aborted dives

Another Common Tern

Sandwich Tern, calling as it went even with a fish in its beak

Sandwich Tern

The sun appeared briefly and what a difference it made to the more distant photos

This Grey Seal as you can see has netting tangled around its neck which has cut into its blubber. It did swim away with the others as the tide came in

Do people go to the Ythan to watch seals or do the seals go to watch the humans. At one point as the tide started to flow around fifty seals were watching people taking photos with phones!

A small section of a very large haul out, perhaps as many as one thousand mostly Greys and a few Common Seals

Dunlin which flew past unannounced

The Sanderling were kept moving by the walkers, it was very busy with the car park full when I left

Great Black-backed Gull, quite a number on the north bank of the estuary at low tide

Off to the south, maybe to the fish curing area in Aberdeen for scraps

The juvenile Black-headed Gull flew from the shore to near the island at Keptie Pond to intimidate the young Grey Heron into dropping it's hard won Roach, it didn't work this time

Although a constant or very frequent visitor this Grey Heron hasn't got used to people and dogs walking around the pond and stays as far away as it can when fishing

An unusually close view of a Lesser Black-backed Gull at Keptie Pond. This is the original frame resized  from 5568 to 1200 pixels wide which my new "batch script" didn't do justice to

Mute Swan at Keptie Pond on a dull day. The pair failed to produce ny cygnets this year and I recall only one last year