North Uist, Outer Hebrides trip. May 2025 (part 2)

 Our first full day on the islands, we decided to not get up too early after all the travelling of the previous day. From the cottage I saw several pairs of Red-throated Divers calling and flying around.

Red-throated Diver

 

There were plenty of Rock Doves about. The ones here are apparently as pure "Rock Dove" as you can get. 

Rock Dove

 Next breakfast, then off out for a drive round. A Kestrel hovering at the side of the road was the next subject.

Kestrel

 

 

One thing we noticed straight away, was the abundance of Short-eared Owls. They seemed to be everywhere, and in areas that I hadn't seen them in the past.

Short-eared Owl

 It was nice to see a Whooper Swan while we were driving around. The orange colouring on it's head due to the iron in the water, where it has been feeding.

Whooper Swan

 

The rest of the day was spent wandering around at RSPB Balranald. It was a recce really, to see what was about and to think about particular photo sessions that I could do there. I did notice that the wader numbers seemed to be lower than usual. The next few images were from the afternoon's wanderings.

Ringed Plover

Common Gull

White Wagtail

Skylark

Common Sandpipers and a New Website

It's been a few months since I posted here, I have been very busy building a new website. I built my old site back in 2003, it has been updated and tweaked over the years, but basically it was the same site I started with. I had noticed that my page views had dropped from around 850 a day to about 150, my rankings on Google had also dropped from top of the first page... something to do with Google algorithms. Basically it's outdated and not Google or mobile friendly.
So having been putting it of for some years, I got stuck in and built a new one. All new images will be larger and it will be a much quicker process of adding them. I'm hoping to make a big impact on my backlog of images over the next 12 months.

I have started to add new images and some of the first have been Common Sandpipers. These were taken in Spain in 2017. Here are a few of them.

The link to my new website: https://www.stevenround-birdphotography.co.uk/

Black-winged Stilts

A few Black-winged Stilt images from my trip to Spain in April. The low sun and camera angle made for some great light and we were lucky enough to have a mating pair, right in front of us.

Common Snipe

More waders from my Mallorca trip back in April. This time Common Snipe in some lovely calm blue water. It is very satisfying to be able to photograph the birds in these perfect conditions.

Wood Sandpipers

Another Sandpiper I photographed in Mallorca was the Wood Sandpiper. Yet again a very obliging subject, right in front of the hide. It was worth the trip just to get the shots of the three Sandpiper species.

Green Sandpipers

Another Sandpiper I photographed in Mallorca was the Green Sandpiper. I had seen them here in the past, but this time the conditions were perfect. With calm blue water and the birds right in front of the hide, I managed some lovely reflective shots.

Marsh Sandpiper

It's been a few months since my last post. During April and May I have been away on photography trips. I spent 8 days in Mallorca and then 10 days in Extremadura, Spain, and I have just returned from 14 days on the Uists, in the Outer Hebrides. This has added 12000 new images to my back log, so it looks like I will be spending quite a bit of time on the computer in the coming months.

Back to my trip in Mallorca. A nice suprise was a Marsh Sandpiper that was at the S'Albufera reserve for a few days while I was there. Quite a rare bird in the UK and Mallorca, so a nice addition to my list of species photographed.

 

Sanderlings

I have finally finished processing and updating my Sanderling images. I have added 67 new images to my website. I had many shots of winter plumaged birds taken locally on the Wirral and North Wales. Then I had images of breeding plumaged birds, taken on the Outer Hebrides, back in 2013. It's hard to believe it is the same species when you compare the two plumages. Both very stunning in the right light and conditions.