Lapwings

Another beautiful day .... no frost this morning but there was still a layer of ice in the centre of the loch. One of the swans was acting as an ice breaker as it tried to get on to the grass.
In the centre of the loch there was a large group of small dark birds ...... looking through the camera lens on full zoom I saw they were lapwings. I've never seen them on the water before - they usually spend their time grazing on the nearby fields or just sitting on the rocks at the side of the loch. The quality of the blip is not as good as I would like but it was such an unusual sight that I wanted to include it anyway.