Twitchers

At the risk of establishing a trend of blips that erode any ounce of cool I may once have had (see Saturday's beaver scout confession), i present to you a picture of my family all a twitch. Friday night's Autumn Watch coverage of RSPB Loch of Strathbeg's 70,000 barnacle geese fired us up for our second visit ever - this time intent on actually getting out of the car to do more than a toilet stop. We finally came upon a hide, via a ministry of defence DANGER OF DEATH perimeter fence, passing a police contingent of sniffer dogs and some frustrated free range cows en route.

Arriving at the hide, thank 'evans we were alone, because Tess got bored after her second foot crossed the threshold and made enough noise to, well, disturb a lot of birds. Dave was surprisingly tolerant of the fact that he was unwittingly engaged in birdwatching -but i guess it's because we didn't stay long and it was all for the benefit of nature boy, who was very happy with the situation and gave running commentary on what might of been an otter, what might have been a... etc etc etc.

In fact he saw a stoat, which i know isn't a bird, but which did us fine, along with heron, swans, geese, lapwings, ducks of all kids, and loads of birds us amateurs didn't have a clue about, apart from Sam, who had all sorts of clues. Add this to a unexpectedly and extremely close encounter with a greedy seal in Fraserburgh harbour and nature boy was happy.

Haven't been to Fraserburgh for a long, long time, so many boarded up shops but you'll always get a good bowl of soup at the lighthouse museum cafe and they have very friendly Fishermen and seals.