Visitors and visiting.

Long Tailed Duck, visiting from Norway.  Looks to me as if he has already celebrated New Year, is that the make up or the camera darling?

This is a whole host of Red Shanks perched on Cairnbulg Harbour wall.  Usually you see the odd one pootling about by the shore line, so to see this lot has inspired me and got the artitistic juices flowing, I feel a 'wet' redshank painting coming on.  That mass of orange legs and beaks and all that soft feathering in between, Oooooo.

 Sandhaven Harbour.

A lot of the smaller boats are pulled up onto the shore, or the sides of the harbour, or however they remove them from the sea.  Obviously bigger boats need a crane, I do know that much.  They need to come out for safety, once the wind gets up, they bash about quite a lot. Presumably also to paint their bottoms and scrape the limpets off, you can tell I know little of the housekeeping here.

This one does look very smart does it not.

As does this duck.  This is no ordinary duck.  The Dawn Patroller has been shooting off out, camera and binoculars and telescope at the ready at the mention of this duck being seen and had, until now, failed to spot it in amongst all the others.  The others being Eider Ducks.

This is a KING Eider duck.  

 Also from Norway.

The one below is just a common Eider Duck, common as we have loads of them here, but the above does cause a buzz amongst the twitchers.

Though I think they are both beautiful, and the latter always reminds me of a Matador.

So what or who have you been visiting?  Cos I dot know about you, but I am totally bored, with this huge gap between the big C and New Year, stir crazy!