Family

When I got off the bus at the Shore the first thing I noticed was a crowd of eider ducks milling around on the Water; the second thing was a high and piercing little voice going "Meep" at approx one second intervals. There seemed to be a lot of milling about amongst the eiders but they were some distance away and it was hard to see what was happening. Eventually I realised that the party included two very small ducklings, one of which was calmly floating about in a cute manner whilst the other one was charging up and down and round and round going meep-meep-meep. (Probably girl duck and boy duck, observed Mr H). In  this photo you can even see the little guy's wake as he zooms from left to right past his mum. Maybe he didn't like the water and wanted to be back in his nice safe egg. The male eider kept trying to herd him back to the safety of the group. Kids, eh?

I could still hear his agitated cries when I was a good hundred yards away up the street; he kept going like a burglar alarm. There were a couple of murderous looking gulls quietly bobbing along at a safe distance from the family, but evidently hoping for a tasty duckling morsel or two.