A sunny autumn Saturday afternoon by the Oban Bay

Hello again
Today I skived off from work. It was just too gorgeous a day to sit indoors. So I spent a wee while just watching the waves come and go, come and go into and out of Oban Bay.
It was nearly high tide and twenty-eight turnstones (aka Arenaria interpres) were skittering ever closer to the harbour wall along the Esplanade as the gentle waves lapped ever higher up their rock. It looked like the birds were waiting for the tide to turn, when there would be rich pickings among the pebbles and bladderwrack on the wet shore.
Something spooked them and twenty of them lifted into the air, a small dark cloud of screams, and went to settle on the pebbly shore between the North Pier and the jetty that reaches into Oban Bay just north of it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9515939@N07/5100104943/
On my way home I invariably take the slightly longer route along the outside of the North Pier. This time I happened on a transfer of four times eight thousand, that is thirty-two thousand, 8-inch/20-cm baby salmon, aka parr,*) from tanks on a lorry into one of the big boats that service the various salmon farms nearby.
The tightly-woven fabric lining of the tank has a kind of funnel that is inserted into the 22-cm diameter tube by which the fish are transferred into the bowels of the boat.
On the transfer from the last tank, something had gone wrong with the seal and some of the parr had come out of the funnel. The men working on the transfer were painstaking in making sure all the fish were ok and put each one of them back into the tube via a round opening at the top.
But one parr had fallen to the ground and I could see the guys had their hands full holding the gap shut and making sure no more fish escaped. So I stepped in and picked this particular baby up: it was slithery smooth and shiny, scintillating in rainbow colours, and twitchy as anything. But I did manage to insert it into the opening at the top of the tube and assume it joined its siblings in the hull.
The man and I had a brief conversation about the lives of these salmon. He said he felt each one of them was really important and it mattered to him that they didn't suffer at any point in their lives.
Another year and the parr will have grown into 2-foot-long smolt*) ready for our tables.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9515939@N07/5100104747/
No photos of this particular event but a couple of links to images that show bonny Oban on a truly stunning day.
Till soon!

*) "Baby salmon are called different names depending on the stage after hatching. When they first hatch they are called Alevin. When they are big enough to swim out of the gravel they are called Fry. They are still very small at this point. When they reach about six inches long they are called Parr. […] After one to three years they are ready to swim into the ocean and they are now called Smolt until they reach adulthood." 
From http://answers.ask.com/Science/Biology/what_is_a_baby_salmon_called