A few pairs of Black-throated Divers breed on the larger lochs around my home. Recently I  spent the day walking out to one such hill loch only to find that the resident pair of divers  were absent from their territory. I returned home in the late afternoon to find what were probably the missing birds socialising with another Black-throat on the loch right in front of the house. I quickly grabbed my gear and went and hid in the roots of a fallen tree down on the shore of the loch. After I had disappeared from the bird’s view their inquisitive nature got the better of them and they swam closer to investigate. Close enough get some pictures.

In the UK the Crested Tit’s range is largely restricted to the Scots pine forests within catchment of the rivers that flow out into the Moray Firth. A few outlying pairs breed locally in the remnants of the old Caledonian Pine Forest.

A nest chamber is usually excavated in the rotting trunk of a dead pine or birch.  After an earlier failed attempt to dig out a hole this pair had found a suitable site four metres up in a large old pine which had probably been killed during a fire which had swept through the area back in the 1950’s

The Blackcap is a species very much at the northern edge of its UK range hereabouts. Like some other warbler species it is mostly unmated singing males that we see around here. Brown capped females are rarely seen except for the occasional Scandinavian migrant or wintering bird.