Christine's walking & birds blog

"You'll remember me when the west wind moves upon the fields of barley,

  You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky as we walk in fields of gold."  (Sting)

Actually this is wheat, but when we first caught sight of the harrier through a hedgerow he really was sailing V-shaped over a sea of rippling barley.

A walk on Dorney Common late afternoon produced a wheatear, on a dung-heap I've been keeping an eye on (sounds a bit sad) in the event of a late migrant turning up.

Then a fox appeared, rooting about high in the heap.

Our walk started in woods with a mistle thrush singing from the top of a tree. Up on the downs it was dullish weather, misty in the distance.

We lunched on the ramparts of Uffington Castle. A meadow pipit was displaying, and a wheatear was on the White Horse Hill triangulation pillar (flush bracket no. 2987).

Greger pointed to something flying over the fields below us; a short-eared owl. It was a fine sight, the owl flying strongly up the bank and then cruising low over the hill-fort; but my efforts to capture the scene failed. A better pic was obtained when it perched momentarily by the Ridgeway. 

A long stretch on the road was enlivened by a distant curlew, and several yellow wagtails.

May 13th Scotland

We stayed in one of the lodges at Ardmair, and woke up on the first morning to snow. This soon disappeared but the weather remained cold all week. The main event was walking half of Quinag, a hill we first went up in 2005 when we walked the whole ridge - and a very fine ridge it is, too.

Where lonely Loch Assynt turns the corner, its river flowing out to Lochinver.

As we dropped to the bealach from which we would start our descent, my heart also sank; last time we'd walked here we had seen ptarmigan, but only on the northern end of the hill. As luck would have it however, a fairly vocal male ptarmigan was on the col itself, although it wasn't easy to locate him.

We began to go down, taking frequent looks back up the hill; and this is the last sighting we would have of the ptarmigan.

I had a fall walking back across the moorland, but it would be another two weeks before I finally went to the doctor and discovered that I had a fractured wrist.

On the last morning I got up early and went out for a last look around; it was cold and windy and there was very little about. Returning to the lodge I found Greger awake and reading in bed, so I took him a coffee and then scanned Loch Canaird. Two small birds were diving at the far end of the beach, and I went out to investigate. I was looking into the sun and they just looked black; but as I got nearer, picking my way between the boats' mooring ropes, I realised that they were Slavonian grebes.

Which made a nice end to the week. 

A cuckoo was calling on Dorney Wetlands, and waders seen included a green sandpiper and a redshank, while this lapwing shared a flood-reduced island with a common sandpiper.

The sandpiper worked its way along the shoreline; and the closer it got to me, the more I marvelled at how tiny it was.