Christine's walking & birds blog

Wednesday - and we couldn't put it off any longer. We had unfinished business with a hill called Breabag. Walking it last year, we'd missed the top in thick cloud and also left out the bone caves because they required a bit of a detour on what was already a long walk, taking in the whole ridge of Breabag and descending into another glen before a tiring road-trek back to the car.

This year, we would get to the summit. We would also avoid the peat hags we'd wandered into last time and then we'd come back down the same way, with energy to spare for the caves. Yep, that's what we would do!

We started off cheerfully in dry weather, stopping to snap where water wells up from a hole (which is sometimes completely dry) and runs weirdly over the grass before settling into a rocky bed and joining the main stream.

Wheatears and meadow pipits had been the dominant birds in the valley. Now, as we began a steep climb to a drier area and just before the rain began, a red grouse erupted croaking from the heather and glided away over the curve of the slope.

We plodded on, finding ourselves once more among the peat hags. Gaining rocky ground just below the ridge, we heard a ptarmigan; but try as we might we couldn't get onto it. The wind was strengthening and the rain came down even harder and turned to sleet.

On the ridge we identified the cairn where we'd eaten lunch on our previous visit; but, as before, everything else was hidden. I was all for giving up and heading down. But Greger is made of sterner stuff and declared he wasn't coming all this way to be beaten by the weather again. Eventually we found ourselves on ground where we could go no higher. It must be the top! A little lower on the summit plateau was this shelter.

We crouched in here getting a little relief from the wind and had our sandwiches and coffee. Our hands were freezing cold and also wet, so that it was difficult to get our gloves back on. We knew we had to get moving again.

In a flat grassy area near the top I heard a lovely fluty call "too-lee"; but again, we could see nothing and alas! in this weather there was no lingering. Golden plover?

Finding the bealach lochan we dropped down past some fine waterfalls to a wide green shelf. Here the stream slowed and widened, looping in wide meanders across this unsuspected marshland. Directly below us was a reedy pool; and from somewhere there came the call of a greenshank. This is  looking back up to the ridge.

Stopping for coffee and cake a bit further down, we looked back to see a brownish bird that somewhat resembled a swift against the sky and concluded it must be a merlin. Not definite enough for a tick, though.

Last year, this waterfall was no more than a trickle, and we walked up to it along the dry stream bed.

This year, there was plenty of water coming down, and small cliffs of rock made it impossible to hug one bank all the way, so we had to cross and recross the stream on sometimes slippery boulders. Great fun, though.

Down near the car park there was quite a lot of noise from a pair of pied wagtails which must have had young nearby, and swallows, house martins and sand martins were swooping round a plantation. A juvenile dipper was on the far side of the stream. (Dippers were also seen here last year; a good place to remember if doing a whistle-stop birding tour of the Highlands.)

We peeled off our sopping wet rucksacks and climbed gratefully into the car. Greger was heard saying that he would never go near that hill again. And we didn't visit the bone caves this time, either.