Eggs

I had the most wonderful day today. I was one of nine people who were privileged to go to the rspb reserve Horse Island opposite Ardrossan. There is restricted access to the island.

We got there by a small boat which anchored as we got nearer to the island, we then had to climb into a small rowing boat to land on the island. We needed 2 small boat trips and 4 rowing boat trips to get all of us onto the island.

Once we were all there we used markers to cover sections of the island and then we walked a short distance apart to count the nests of the gulls - herring and great blacked backed gulls. There were also a few oyster catchers' nests and quite a lot of eider ducks' nests. We found some empty nests, some with cute fluffy chicks, some with eggs. We found a few of the eggs like the one in the photo with the chicks starting to break through the shells. We spent the whole day doing the count of the nests. We also saw rock pipits, a peregrine and two shelducks.

It was a very tiring but worthwhile day. Don't know the final tally but it is expected to be over a thousand. It was very difficult choosing a blip today. I had to choose between fluffy gull chicks or tiny eider ducks or these eggs. The eider chicks leave the nest after 24 hours and then go out to sea so we were very lucky to see them.