Good afternoon!

The morning was spent metal detecting in the garden trying to find something we'd lost. In the afternoon Barry came round to check a few Unst things over. That was all resolved pretty quickly so we decided to go off for a few hours - to North Cave . The better birds [yellow wagtails and common sandpiper] stayed out of camera range but others were photographed. Just a few photographs this time.

We wondered if this was a yellow-legged gull but it seems rather dark backed and is therfore a lesser black-backed gull.

Lesser Black-backed Gull

There were a number of juvenile shelducks on the main lake - only British ducks with red bills are red-crested pochard and shelduck.

Shelduck juv Common terns were present on all three lakes we visited during the afternoon.

Common Tern Common Tern The resident greylags are making the most of the farmer's maize/sweetcorn crop. They gave me a flypast in nice light...

Greylag Geese Greylag Geese A kestrel hovered fairly close in the hazy light but not really quite close enough.

Kestrel Kestrel A caterpillar caught Barry's eye. I put the macro lens on. I'll put this image on ispot and update this post if I find out more...

Apparently it's a peacock larva inachis io. Thanks to Vinny and chrisbrooks on ispot.

Peacock caterpillar This is what it will become. Photographed at North Cave last year.

Peacock Finally I fired a few optimistic shots at the swifts. They won't be with us for much longer. I'll miss them.

Swift Swift

Not too bad, I didn't think!

All photos 28.07.12 except the peacock butterfly.