Diving into the Firth

Anyone walking along the path by the golf course or along the beach and at the harbour can not have failed to see the diving birds out at sea.  Most of the gulls out there dive and stop on top of the water, feet first, but the Gannets dive head firsts and break the water with their arrow like heads and swim under water in search of their prey.  The Gannets normally stay quite far out, so are quite difficult to identify.  But when the sun is shing the unmistakable bright white wings with vivid black tips are adult Gannets. 

As always, click on the pictures to get an enlarged view of each one.

The two pictures below show them ads they fly over the tanker, just to prove the pictures were taken from Nairn!

The more plain looking, dark brown large birds are juvenile Gannets. These birds dive from a much lower height than their grown up counterparts.

  The picture below shows the arrow shape they take as they prepare to enter the water.

The smaller white birds are Terns.  These are up and down very quickly, and come closer into shore to give better views.  Having said that, they are very hard to capture on film as they move very quickly and it's best when the sun catches them to enable me to get a decent shot.