Best of a bad job

I took a load of photos today on my walk with the dogs around Belhaven Saltmarsh this morning, down at the Bridge to Nowhere and at Dunbar Harbour this afternoon and finally at Seafield Pond and overlooking Belhaven Bay at sunset but none of them really pleased me. Part of the problem was that it was a really sunny if bitingly cold day and any elements of the images that were in shadow held little detail. For instance I got a great grab shot of a heron taking off and flying over head but because of the brightness of the sky what I could rescue of the the heron's plumage was so dark that it quickly became pixellated as I tried to brighten it up later on the computer. Way beyond what my noise reduction programmes could remedy. In the end I have chosen a bog standard picture of a heron gull at rest in the rocky sandstone cliffs around Dunbar Harbour just because it has such nice plumage detail and stands out nicely  against the darker cliff behind.