Young country diary: Turnstones look like they're being told off | Hannah

Western Isles, Scotland: The adult ones keep on chasing them across the beach like they're naughty children taking over a bowl of sweetsOn a hazy day, we stroll down a rough path and the bumpy tractor track that leads to the machair (which is sandy grassy land by the coast). It's full of early marsh orchids, silverweed and bird's?foot trefoil. There is a ragged robin (a pink flower) that is bedraggled and looks like our bantam chicken, Willow, on a wet day.Carpets of daisies, flag irises, meadow buttercups and marsh marigolds line the bogs. There are crowds of horsetails in the boggy ditches, cuckoo flowers and red-stem stork's bill decorating the sandy track, and cotton grass blowing in the breeze. We pass rabbit carcasses that animals had been feasting on, maybe including a white-tailed eagle! We pass lapwings, oystercatchers, redshanks and snipes. Arctic terns fly overhead defending their nests. We get to the white sandy beach. No one is there as usual, except the sea birds and waders. Then suddenly, a flock of birds catches my attention - not the regular oystercatchers, ringed plovers or sanderlings. They look like lapwings ? but they can't be! I grab a phone and record their chattering, peeping noises. The app identifies them as turnstones. Continue reading...