Along the Fife Coast

Today I accompanied Crafty Green Boyfriend on a trip up to the Fife Coast as a volunteer assistant to help him test some wildlife recording tablets that haven't been working properly. We had a lovely misty walk along the coast from Tayport through the Tentsmuir Nature Reserve.

It's a lovely area with some very distinctive semi flooded grassy areas

and woodland alongside the beach

Some very distinctive structures line much of the beach, these were built in 1941 to prevent enemy troops from landing on the beach

We were testing the tablets specifically by recording information about birds including red breasted mergansers of which we saw several. We were most delighted though to find a little egret, which is still a rare bird in Scotland, and best distinguished from other egrets by its lovely yellow feet (see the second photo below).

 There's a short explanation of why the little egret has yellow feet here on the Discover Wildlife site.

There were plenty of eiders too, though the only one we got close enough to to photograph was this one

There are bunnies too, including those that live in this warren in the sand dunes

and a silly bunny that had started to make a burrow in the main path

With my new enthusiasm for lichens, I was delighted to find lots of beautiful specimens around, though I don't know which species any of them are (apart from the yellow Xanthoria parietina)! But they're worth admiring anyway