I spied this really big bird in the distance and tried to get as close as I could. I had parked near a cliff so you couldn’t get down to a beach but I found my way to a pier through a local yacht club and watched the birds from there. There is a mixture of cormorants, little pied cormorants and one big pied cormorant in these shots. It was still fairly early, before 9.30am.

I saw a group of seagulls flying and swooping and making their usual raucous noise. But every now and then I heard a smaller sound, a kind of ‘cheep’ from birds of the same or similar colour and size. Closer inspection showed it was a different bird. My husband thought it might be a Tern and he was right. It’s called a Little Tern and as we watched it would stop in mid-air, look downwards and then swoop into the water to catch its prey and take off again.

You can find out more about the Little Tern here.

We noticed a flock of pigeons at the beach. Can’t say we’ve ever seen any at the beach before. I often wonder what it is that makes birds take off together in the same direction and turn direction at the same time too. What is the signal they hear, feel or see I wonder?