It was there when I pressed the shutter release ......

The most useful photographic advice I ever received was "if you want people to believe you're a competent photographer, never show anyone your failures". That's meant dumping well over 99% of my photographs, which is much easier and cheaper to do in these days of digital photography, when they disappear into the ether with the click of a button, at no cost. 

But digital photography also delivers its own special kind of failures, thanks to the phenomenon of shutter-lag - that interval between pressing the shutter release and the sensor capturing the image. So I've got plenty of pictures like those below, which looked really good when I composed them and pressed the shutter....

This long-tailed tit was sitting perfectly on that twig in the foreground, looking at me over its shoulder as I pressed the shutter release  ..... it must have taken off like a rocket.

In those last few milliseconds, this pigeon decided that it didn't want any publicity. Its feet came out well, though ...

.... and this guillemot was overcome with shyness at the last moment too....

The End of the Pier Show...

Roker pier and lighthouse, at the mouth of the river Wear in Sunderland. A fine place for a stroll on a summer's afternoon like today, with bright sunshine, barely a breath of wind and almost a flat calm sea at low tide. 

A good place to watch seabirds too, like this juvenile cormorant ....

......learning the art of diving for fish. The trick is to push down hard on the water surface with that broad tail, to give the dive a bit of momentum ...

.... and at the third attempt it caught this. It seemed surprised and not quite sure what to do with such a large and lively catch, which looks like it might be a an eel-pout .........

.... which are notoriously slimy ... which may be why the bird struggled with its grip, dropping and re-catching its prey twice ...

.... before it managed to get the fish's head into its throat and started to swallow it ....

.... which didn't go according to plan. The fish must have been putting up a fight inside the bird's throat because the cormorant regurgitated it ...

.... dunked it in the sea a few more times, then swallowed it again ...

 ....and this time the catch stayed down. Must be still wriggling though, judging from that thoughtful expression on the cormorant's face.

No such problems for the terns which fished alongside the pier.

The calm, sunlit water was remarkably clear, so you could see vast shoals of small fish swimming in unison above the sandy bottom. There must have been well over a 1000 in this shoal but the terns ignored them, even through they flew over them many times ..... maybe they were too small to merit a plunge-dive ....

.... or maybe they preferred to catch their fish in deeper water...

Meanwhile, alongside the pier this year's guillemot juveniles were relentlessly pursuing their parents ....

....... adopting a submissive posture .......

.... and calling incessantly for food .....

..... which must have been easy to spot by peering down into the sunlit water like this.....

...... and the water was so clear that I could watch the birds 'flying' underwater in pursuit of prey.

A Stroll to the End of the Pier

It was a perfect summer afternoon, so we decided to take a stroll to the end of Tynemouth pier and discovered that it was a favourite spot for common terns to take a break and indulge in a bit of preening....

... which is necessary if you spend most of your life diving head-first into the sea every few minutes.

Only a brief respite though, and now they were in tip-tip shape time it was time to get back to work....

.... feeding the juveniles that were parked at intervals all along the pier.

Demanding work...

.. so the parent birds' feet hardly touched the ground ...

... while their were feeding their offspring, which ....

...apart from occasionally staggering to their feet for a stretch, just sunbathed.

This herrring gull had the temerity to land near a chick and the parent bird carried out relentless attacks until the gull was driven off, which is maybe why ....

... this turnstone tip-toed past PDQ, fearful that it would be in for the same treatment.

A small flock of redshanks, driven off the Black Middens rocks at the mouth of the Tyne by the rising tide, landed in the pier briefly....

... but didn't settle for long before the terns drove them off too.

The terns even had a go at this guillemot, swimming innocently by, but it showed them a clean pair of heels.

Mull of Galloway 1

Last week's trip down to the Mull of Galloway was an absolute delight. This is the southernmost point in Scotland - further south in latitude than Durham, where we'd driven from. The fine lighthouse stands at the point where the waters of the North Channel and Solway Firth mingle and from this spot you can see Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the peaks of the Lake District.

The cliffs here are an RSPB reserve noted for nesting seabirds like these ....

... guillemots that nest on impossibly narrow ledges ....

... where there's standing room only during the breeding season.

The cliff top grassland provides fine habitat for species like this twite .....

... and a hard-working meadow pipit that seemed to have lost its tail feathers.