Scotland mostly - through nsl4u

Well, these are the black guillemots...rather beautiful...very dark brown to black with bonny back wing flashes.
They roost in 'holes in wa's' and I saw the first down on the esplanade ledge, and as I looked over closer saw the one about 4 feet down poking it's head out of a wall hole....! I'm sure it knew I was there and was not spooked though I was canny.
There were 4 of them very active and courting I'm certain.
The males (I think, can't really differentiate them?) were ducking a wee bit and getting 'close', by just tagging right along at the back, ardent laddishness maybe! If you look I've got a couple of them under water...they dive quite shallowly and you can see those white flashes, maybe 2-3 feet under......
Great entertainment. They took off and about 100 yards away I saw another dive into the wall near the toilets at the end of the look-out tower pier.

Their cry is lovely, it's a prsweeet, prsweeet...and their mouths in bright red matching those dandy little feet!

A great 20 minutes --THANKYOU birdies!

Kind regards, Denis.

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Labels: Greenock, west esplanade

# posted by Denis Bell @ 4/08/2009 10:21:00 pm