For many years I have used a mobile hide to stalk and photograph shorebirds in the tidal waters around the Moray Firth. Lately I have been trying out a floating hide with some success. The new hide glides effortlessly up to flocks of roosting birds but has the disadvantage of being less manageable, than my old hide, in anything but the slightest breeze. It is a bit like having someone nudging you in the back the whole time that you are trying to frame up and focus. Image stabilisation coped well but I had great difficulty maintaining a fixed point of focus. Oystercatchers and roosting Knot were unphased by my approach

Curlews alerted by a low flying jet aircraft. One of the problems I usually find with this type of high tide roost photography is in finding birds that are awake and active

Recently I came across a big green dragonfly egg-laying close a pool just above the high water mark on a firth in Easter Ross. I suspected that I might be looking at a Southern Hawker, Aeshna cyanea a species, which is expanding its range in Scotland.

This time last year I had photographed a dragonfly close to my home. Without much thought I had filed away the images as female Common Hawker, Aeshna juncea, a species very common in the uplands. Only when I was filing my new images did I discover that last year’s female Common Hawker was actually a male Southern Hawker. Hitherto I had not thought the species to be present in my area.