I'm gonna keep on birdin' at the.....
Breaking my chronological pledge (I'll rewind shortly) briefly to accommodate these always fabulous, always mood-lifting beauties. I've been up here in the Highlands for a few days, and the town of Forres - yep, as in the seat of Macbeth's court, culture fans! - is not only close by, but also unavoidably part of my journey to the coast, which I've been making pretty much every day since I arrived.
It's also Waxwing Central - whenever there's an influx, they descend on the town in numbers, and even when there isn't, it's statistically pretty much your best chance of seeing them in the depths of the British winter. So, with flocks reported from there and other northern Scottish towns over recent days, it would've been foolish not to pit-stop there and see if I could catch up with them.
A couple of tantalisingly brief, distant views of flocks as they disappeared beyond sight were as good as it got (although admittedly I only gave it ten minutes or so each time), until this afternoon, which was a real treat; with a bit more time to burn, I had a drive around the housing estates, within which several corridors are adorned with trees and bushes absolutely dripping with tasty berries.
But the constantly roving flocks (a few, totalling at least 65 by the time they combined a little later) were / are very skittish, never settling for too long at any favoured spot and disappearing off into the safety of nearby woodlands with some regularity; hence, it was a game of chance, trying not to piss off the locals by crawling in second along back streets and pulling over in vaguely stupid places.
Of those locals: they kind of made my day to be honest, with pretty much every one of them stopping for a chat and acknowledging with a knowing pride how special their town is for these particularly special birds. Farming out my bins for various nice people was a tiny payback for their patience and goodwill.
Next time - why I kept gravitating to the coast in the first place....
