Garden watching in Scotland

I haven't been out with the camera for quite a while  -just too much to do, but now I have a week off and we are at the cottage in Scotland. Sunday's drive up was cold and wet, and when we arrived there was nothing in the garden to speak of- most unusual.  I topped up the feeders and by Monday morning the chaffinches were telegraphing the presence of the food and the usual suspects started to appear.
Monday was pretty cold - clear, bright with a snell breeze to keep you on your toes. We had to wait in for the telephone engineer so planned to spend the day gardening, pruning the bushes that were a bit neglected during last year's building works.

When I stopped for a cuppa the buzzards appeared along the valley behind the cottage - hunting along the Luce valley, accompanied by flocks of gulls that use the valley as a shortcut from Loch Ryan to Luce Bay.
The treat of the afternoon however was the arrival of a goldcrest in the bushes along the road - perpetual motion all around the house scouring the shrubs for food. It was so active and secretive it was a nightmare to photograph - especially through dirty sunlit windows ;-)  I grabbed a mediocre shot - just enough to record the bird before it moved on. hopefully it is resident - thanks to my iPhone app iChirp, I think I have identified the puzzling calls I'd heard this morning as goldcrests, so maybe I'll see them tomorrow.
Just before I put the camera away, I was treated to a clear view of the timid dunnock - it finally shot out from the bushes to grab a meal and I got a view of its plumage - a seemingly drab little brown bird turns out to have beautiful colouring when you look closely.

Any way, window washing was the order of the afternoon along with a visit from the long awaited BT engineer - hopefully tomorrow's birds will be easier to capture and definitely easier to post online!  However if the weather holds we'll be out for a walk - maybe to see if the dippers are in residence in the river ... the garden birds may have to wait.