Happy birthday GB - or do you stop 'celebrating' and start 'miserating' once you are past 60+! The day began misty but here that is not necessarily a 'Bad `Thing' and the views can be brilliant in the mist as it gradually sinks down into the valley with the sun coming up. A Cuckoo was calling away very close by but not from any perch that we could see. (Can I add a bird to my 'holiday list' if only hear it?)

The mist left water droplets on the cobwebs. A Buzzard was observed from the study window as it has been a few times since we got here - sometimes perching on the fence posts. Most amazing bird so far to me was the Snipe which thrummed its wa over my head so close as to make me duck as I was just over the garden fence this morning. Apart from the mechanical nature of the noise, its volume and the shock it was also the fact that I was se it was going to hit me. Needless to say the camera was on macro setting at the time even if I had responded quickly enough.

We went into Stornoway and I had a brief walk in the woods while Barry shopped. The lichens on the trees are very healthy - a sign of the unpolluted air. There is a beautiful Larch just outside the lodge with both young and old cones on it. We had coffee in the library and searched unsuccessfully for a water lily for GB for his birthday.

I photographed the boats in the harbour. Boats always look so romantic in the sunshine - so long as one does not have to go out to earn one's living in them.

As always there was a Herring Gull on guard duty on one of them. A friend of Barry's came around for lunch during which I momentarily broke off to photograph a Hooded crow. Considering how common they are I have had few chances to photograph one as yet.

In the afternoon I played at photographing the garden birds such as a regular visitor, the Greenfinch, before wandering down to the shore and playing with the camera at low tide.

Barry dug out more of his prospective waterfall and claimed to have been hard at work but as this photo from the shore showed he spent part of the time chatting!

The way down to the shore takes one alongside the stream in the adjacent croft and the Yellow flag are just beginning to come into flower there but they cannot as yet match the yellow carpet of Marsh Marigolds. As elsewhere throughout the island every damp part has a good sprinkling of Ladies' Smock.

The quiet little beach immediately below Barry's, with its view of Bayble Island just offshore, was as beautiful as ever. And, also as usual, the lichens so cover the rocks above the water line that their original ground colour is invisible .

The boulders at the top of the beach caught my eye - in particular the beautiful graining of the Gneiss. Gneiss (pronounced 'nice') was formed by high-grade regional metamorphic processes from preexisting formations that were originally either igneous or sedimentary rocks.

An Oystercatcher posed politely on the rocks for me.

Among the other birds on the shore were the inevitable Herring Gulls, a Lesser Black-backed Gull, and a Ringed Plover, seen above in flight.

A most attractive Cyanea lamarckii jellyfish was washed up on the sand (Barry tells me that I am not allowed to call it beautiful since he can concede how I might think it attractive but not beautiful!) It was a delightful purple colour.

Another tiny jellyfish was floating around - possibly a baby Moon Jellyfish (Aurelia aurita).

One of the seaweeds on the shore was Dabberlocks ( Alaria esculenta) - the length of which can be seen from the bootprint in the sand in the foreground. There was plenty of Sea Lettuce (Ulva lactua) floating around.

A lovely delicate species which I think may be Porphyra umbilicalis was another seaweed being washed around at the tideline.... Barry's friends Pat and Dave came for dinner and Fiona called in at he cheese and biscuits stage. All in all a most pleasant day.