Anyone who’s read the adventure series will know what Jack Trent is obsessed with. Birds, photography and adventures, probably in that order!

Well, on holiday last week I had my camera of course, and on a walk along the cliffs we spotted a rock covered in gulls and it reminded me of The Sea of Adventure. This was definitely on a smaller-scale, but it still made me think of Jack’s excitement at seeing all the sea birds nesting in the cliffs.

So here are some of my best attempts at being Jack from my holiday (click/tap on any to see them full-sized). There were supposed to be a few more photos than I have included, but for some reason my SD card stopped working about three-quarters of the way through transferring the photos to my laptop, and is now corrupted. I’ve had no luck recovering any of the remaining photos despite trying several methods. I suppose that’s the modern equivalent of dropping a roll of photo out of an analogue camera or someone opening the darkroom door mid-developing of pictures.

The photos that started it all

The seagulls we spotted from our walk from Collieston to Hackley Bay. Somehow much more interesting and picturesque than the ones you see all around the bins in cities!

Unlike Jack I am no bird expert. Even with Google search results at my fingertips I’m not completely sure what kind of gulls these are.

I suspect they are lesser black-backed gulls but they could be herring gulls or kittiwakes. (I used this guide to try to figure it out. Can’t see the leg colour but the darker grey body seems to match the black-backed photo.) Any bird experts willing to wade in?

Tired arms in Hackley Bay

A rock at the back of Hackley Bay was covered in house martin nests and we could see the chicks practically hanging out of the nests waiting to be fed.

Guaranteed whichever nest I focussed on was the one which didn’t get fed, and I spent ages holding up my heavy camera waiting and waiting and eventually I did get a shot of a parent feeding a chick. They’re so fast, flying in, barely a second or two feeding then they’re off again. I bet Jack would have had a tripod for this.

Pretending to be Philip Mannering for a moment

We were lucky to find a few live crabs at Hackley Bay (though no-one was remotely interested in picking them up for a pocket pet!) and a starfish. Jack probably wouldn’t have wasted his precious film on crabs, but with a digital camera I had no concerns.

We also caught at least half a dozen smaller crabs back at Collieston harbour (Brodie’s new fishing net was put to good use!) and a couple of little things I call shrimpy things. I Googled rockpool shrimps and it turns out that’s exactly what they’re called.

And then there were the seals. Sadly two third of my seal photos were lost in the corruption, but I have a few at least. These were taken at Newburgh Beach where most of the signs guiding you say SEALS ⇒ and not beach.

Jack would definitely have used up some of his film on these seals. They were lying in a big tangled line along the edge of the Ythan (the river that cuts the beach in two) and constantly fighting for a bit more space. I had a video of them doing just that, and the tremendous noise they were making but yep, that’s lost too.

There were also a large number of ducks on the Ythan not far from the seals.

Back to Jack

Up at New Slains Castle there were rocks out to sea with more gulls and what I think are a few cormorants.

Plus earlier in the week we saw some swans and cygnets at Aden Country Park.

The geese photos from Haddo House are lost, except for the one from my phone with Brodie feeding them. I’m not sure how interested Jack would be in swans and geese. Birds out in the wild perhaps, but not so much ones on country house lakes?

Collieston

Here’s where we were on holiday. The harbour was a perfect sheltered spot for swimming (or should I say bathing!), with plenty of rock pools and sand.

We were further back from the harbour, but it still only took a few minutes to walk down. We were looking out over the cliffs to the south, towards Hackley Bay.

Collieston had a history of smuggling with fishermen bringing in illicit booze to quiet coves and caves, and the farmers loading it into their carts to transport it inland. There is even rumours of secret passages in the area. We didn’t find any, but I bet the Mannering-Trents would have!