Riding the wind

The weather wasn't as awful as forecast, though there wasn't a glimpse of the sun or blue sky amidst the grey pall of the sky. It was windy, though not knock-you-over windy even on the front at Sandside. This lesser black-backed gull was riding the wind along with a few black-heads. The gustiness meant they didn't hang conveniently in the air for a photo, they were blown all over the sky, and it took a few efforts to get one in focus long enough to press the shutter. It was a useful test for the camera and lens in poor light, with a ridiculously high ISO. This is cropped in from the extra, which itself was a crop of the original. It's grainy at this size, but not that bad.  We are blessed with the capabilities of modern digital cameras.

I had been beginning to think I would be left blipless today. We had been to set up the hall for Wifie's Qi Gong workshop tomorrow morning. One of the perks of being the chauffeur/gopher/roadie is that I was treated to lunch at the Hazlemere in Grange. Very good it was too.

I'm still looking for answers as to how long a pike lives after being swallowed alive by a cormorant. Birds of the Western Palearctic had no answer, and many of my other bird books do no more than help with identification. I shall keep searching. BWP does confirm that fish are swallowed alive, as I have so often seen. So there must be something that causes a fish with sharp teeth to be more or less instantly stunned when swallowed, or else they could do some serious internal damage..