Pebble plover

So many times I've meant to sit down and write a blog, but what a year....as with everything else in 2020 so far, plans have gone awry and my intention to focus my Explorer award on National Cycle Network routes in Edinburgh has altered. Instead I am loitering a lot along South Ayrshire's coastal route 7 where the beaches are deep with shells, sandwich terns and gannets dot the sky, and low tides reveal rockpools and beasties that attract oystercatchers, curlews and ruddy turnstones. Far back in the summer, I was birdwatching at Doonfoot beach alongside route 7 when a man with a long lens camera gestured me over and pointed to a Ringed Plover chick. Or that's what he said he was pointing to. I saw seaweed and rocks and pebbles. Nothing that looked like the stark ministerial dog-collar of the adult bird. Look closer, he said, just there. One of the mottled pebbles was not a pebble at all, but a soft-focus Ringed Plover chick, eyes tightly closed against the world or the sand. It was captivating but we didn't linger - if an adult sees an intruder near its nest or chicks on the open beach it flies a short distance away, calling and behaving as if it has a broken wing to attract the predator towards it. A technique which must be effective alongside the chicks' sandy camouflage if they are to survive the dogs' noses, stomping wellies and children's sandcastles of a seaside resort - hopefully this little one did.