Plan of Attack

Northern Gannet off Dunbar, East Lothian. Thousands of gannets arrive in the spring to breed on the Bass Rock, hence their latin name Morus bassanus. This was a planned shot after I noticed yesterday that the birds fly pretty close to the Battery by Dunbar harbour. I reckoned that if I could get to the farthest point of the rocks out from the Harbour wall then I would just have to wait for a bird to come that little bit closer. And so it turned out =)

The gannets fly in small groups south along the coast and until today I thought they were looking for shoals of fish, but I could see that they were travelling to a beach where they collected nest material and flew back north with quite large bundles in their beaks, as you can see in this picture looking north from the rocks as 3 birds fly home.

I was pleased with 2 others today - this one from the rocks of gannets flying with the Bass Rock in the background and this one from the harbour mouth showing 2 boats setting off towards the Bass Rock as gannets fly by and a Kittiwake comes in to land.

My friend Iain was telling me he used to have the job of shovelling the guano (bird poo) off the paths round the Bass Rock linking the helipad to the small harbour and lighthouse. In one year there's a foot or so of the stuff! I imagine the paths becoming deeper and deeper trenches through ever increasing layers of stinky white deposits!

I also took a few of the fulmar pairs nesting by the harbour mouth, but learned a lesson there: when photographing white birds against a predominantly dark background, drop the exposure compensation and probably use spot metering. Which is to say - they're all over-exposed. So, that'll have to wait.

Tomorrow we're off to Arran on the 0852 train. The bikes are ready, the trailer's loaded, the children have packed their clothes... and the dining room table's heaving with all the stuff I'm going to have to carry! My preferred rucksack looks awfully little. Well, what's the worst that can happen? Rain, midges, freeze at night... Ah, it'll be fine!