Day 322, Castles, in the air, nearly

This is a terrific castle.  Dunnottar Castle is perched on a rocky outcrop next to the cliffs just outside Stonehaven in Scotland.

It's a short walk from the town along the hazardous cliff top.  There is then a steep descent down what are now concrete steps.  The there's a steep climb up to the entrance of the castle.

This sort of ascent/descent is normal for people from Sheffield so we just barged the wheezing tourists (mostly American, here mainly for the golf) out of the way and marched up the near-vertical steps into the castle.

Once inside there are quite a few buildings to see.  Some of the buildings have been restored.  Many of the buildings have nesting Herring Gull on them with the most enormous chicks almost in touching distance.  There were Fulmar too.

I could see House martins flying into one of the buildings.  This was happening very regularly, apart from when there were visitors in a particular part of the building.  Taking a closer look I could see a nest inside, just above head height over a window, and there were tiny beaks poking our every now and then.  I left them to it.

Amazing how the wildlife was nesting in such close proximity to humans.  One small boy was oblivious to a Herring Gull, almost as big as him and squawking like mad, as he stood within about a metre of a nest while being filmed by his Iowan father and standing on a bit of rampart.

They may have been from Idaho.  Or Oregon, or Michigan.  I just made their home origin bit up.

Either way, it is a mighty impressive thing, there is quite a lot of it, and nature is on immediate hand.

And it is high up, and definitely in the air.

Maybe they were from Nevada or Texas, or what about Nebraska, Georgia, North Dakota.

Who knows huh.

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