Christine's walking & birds blog

A male blackcap was seen from the window this morning, moving through the buddleia on the other side of the back wall. I note that one was reported on Hampshire's "going birding". I don't know if mine is a late stayer/summer migrant, or a new arrival for the winter.

At the end of the pier we could see leaves being carried rapidly downstream on the river, presumably from Nairn gardens and other woodlands; they were probably then swept round to the beach and left high and dry on the sand as the tide receded.

At home, our unwanted visitor turned up again, knocking first on the back door and then going round to knock on a side window when Greger refused to let him in. It didn't help that this time, it was dark. Good job we always lock doors now, otherwise he would probably have just walked in again.

The staining on the neck of the swans is apparently from their feeding habits in iron-rich water.

From the beach car park at Achnahaird, I could see immediately that the glaucous gull was back.


As I left the car to walk across the cliffs the rain came down harder until it was like sleet stinging my face; I was soaked before I reached the beach. The gulls lifted off lazily as I approached, but the glauc didn't move.


Also present: three long-tailed ducks, and an adult and a juvenile great northern diver. A peregrine was seen in the distance.

Ben Wyvis

"A vast, characterless, sprawling massif which may well discourage anything but the briefest visit." (Irvine Butterfield, The High Mountains of Britain and Ireland.)

"Ach, it's nothing but a big, boggy pudd'n!" (Kilted Scotsman eating porridge in the Achnasheen Hotel, August 1993. Incidentally, the Achnasheen Hotel later burnt down.)


We got up when it was still dark and Greger had to scrape ice off the windscreen. After a forty-minute drive, we parked and set off up the path with hats and gloves on.  I heard crossbill calls, and this optimistic shot probably shows three (with a chaffinch top left). Crossbill makes the Scottish mountain list!


The Garbat Forest was beguiling, but it was as ever exhilarating to leave the plantations behind and get out onto open moorland. Greger snapped this with his mobile; ahead is An Cabar, our first top and the southern end of the long ridge of Wyvis. We thought we heard red grouse but failed to see anything.


Great views opened up. This is Lochluichart Wind Farm, with the easternmost of the Fannichs on the extreme right. The hill on the far left is Fionn Bheinn (about 30 kilometres away) and is the Munro we went up when staying in the Achnasheen Hotel all those years ago. (It was admittedly a very wet year.)


Before reaching the first top, we heard and then saw three ptarmigans above us. Two disappeared but one stayed put, close to the path, only standing up reluctantly as we climbed above it.



The path has been fortified with large blocks of rock to prevent further erosion - a staircase of stone snaking its way up the hill. Ben Wyvis is a very popular outing, a sort of  "home hill" for Inverness. The wide ridge is rather Cairngorm-like; it's a national nature reserve, and you are urged to keep to the path in order to safeguard the special habitat. Here, we still have a fair way to go to the top, even though it's in sight.


The summit shelter on Glas Leathad Mor ("Glas Lehat Moar") was full, so we sat on its outer rocks to eat our lunch. It was pretty cold. With people coming and going all the time it was impossible to get a clear shot of the triangulation pillar; so I just snapped the number at the bottom and then took a general shot as we began the walk back.



Having got our circulation back, we stopped to watch four or five ravens tumbling over the huge grassy bowl of the Coire na Feola.


Back down among the conifers we saw a large flock of finches - a couple of hundred, at least. Among them was at least one brambling - another first for my mountain list.


The walk was nearly fifteen kilometres, and as usual, although we were among the first on the hill - we were among the last off it. Everyone overtakes us.

I decided to count the golden plover and put the number on my BirdTrack "casual" records. There were only seventeen today, with twenty-two starlings and only one dunlin.

Earlier, I'd walked across the cliffs to the beach but again, I couldn't get near them that way without disturbing them. Another dead sheep was lying near the dunes.


Actually it was there a couple of days ago, so it's odd that it hasn't been scavenged, considering all the gulls and the two ravens nearby. The sand was gradually claiming the carcass, giving it a desiccated appearance.

Two whooper swans were fast asleep on Loch Raa. One raised its head wearily when a noisy lorry went past, but soon lowered it and dozed off again. Exhausted new arrivals, perhaps. Two long-tailed ducks were in the bay.

Having finally set off across the cliffs, I was stopped in my tracks by these three long-tailed ducks.


But the interest wasn't mutual.


There were gulls messing about on the water's edge, but the glaucous wasn't among them. A Slavonian grebe made up for that.


A flock of about twenty-five golden plover was flying around with a similar number of small waders, seemingly all dunlins. I tracked them down to a pool where they mixed with starlings; but I couldn't get too close. I love the machair - but there's just nowhere to hide. However, this dead thistle seemed to do the trick.


There were still plenty of stonechats around, and I snapped this one from the car window.


Also seen - curlews and great northern divers; and eider drakes are now appearing in breeding plumage. When Greger and I walked to the shops this morning we saw a Brent goose on the water just off the golf-course spit.

A dipper was on the stream that runs down the beach.


As I watched the dipper, two otters - a mother with a young one - slunk and swam past down the stream to forage in the wet sea-weed on the shore. A chap from the camp-site who was mowing the grass told us that there's sometimes an old dog otter around which is nearly blind; it crosses the camp-site and blunders into caravans and tents.

Twenty whooper swans flew over when we were in the Inverewe Garden car park; and a redpoll was feeding, seemingly one-legged, along the path near the entrance.


On the way back along Loch Ewe, this group of twenty-five far out on the sea appears to be all black-throated divers (I'm going by the white on the rear of the flanks) - maybe juveniles.


While we watched them a familiar chunky shape flapped slowly across the loch and the road; a white-tailed eagle heading inland.


A last, brief stop above Little Loch Broom brought red breasted mergansers and goosanders swimming together, but only one pic of the goosanders was usable.


Then it was home, after a nice day of lazy, lay-by birding.

While I stood on the beach, two flocks of whooper swans flew in and landed on the Allt Loch Raa at the head of the bay. At least some of these are probably new ones, since yesterday's included some juveniles. I counted forty birds.


A couple getting ready to walk told me that they lived in Cambridgeshire and sometimes went to see whooper swans at Welney. They were off to do the headland, and I felt sorry for them; we had the same strong winds yesterday, but at least we had sun and blue skies as well.

At Badentarbat beach I drove onto the grass in the drizzle and snapped a foraging curlew from the car.


Back at Achnahaird I watched a great northern diver and this wintry looking razorbill diving far off-shore.

Out on the machair were at least thirty golden plover. Also seen: gannets (adult and juvenile), twites, buzzards, ravens, great skuas, two mergansers, four snipe, lots of stonechats, and a small flock of barnacle geese flying south.

Black sheep - but this lot belong in a family. They're incredibly dainty and really very sweet.


The going was tougher this time as the ground was quite boggy. A single red grouse and later a pair erupted from the heather croaking and made us jump. A reed bunting was again seen near the river; and a great northern diver was in Garvie Bay.

On the Rubh a' Choin (means Headland of the dogs or wolves), Greger looks for a lunch spot (he's very fussy about the height of rock he sits on).


We saw curlews, shags, and a heron along the north coast, and far out to sea a white-tailed eagle flew west. Meanwhile Greger takes three giant steps for mankind.


The Allt Loch Raa, the river that runs down the side of the beach, was fuller than we've ever seen it. But the birds were disappointing; only two distant ringed plovers and no glacial glaucous today. But compensation came in the form of twenty or so barnacle geese flying south.


As we drove away we were about to check the lochan for the swans when six birds came flying past.


We assumed there would be none left on the lochan - but in fact there were twenty-one birds there.


A nice ending to a good day.

It didn't seem in any hurry to leave; even when I got out of the car it just sauntered casually through the gateway and walked off up the road.

This is the narrow pass between the tail end of Lurcher's Crag (western end of the Cairngorm massif) to the left and Creag a' Chalamain to the right. I've seen it referred to as a boulder field, but not even this quite prepared me for what is in effect a corridor of tumbled, shattered rock. Some of it looks as though it's still tumbling. Most of it is stable but now and then you step on one that seesaws or shifts.


Apart from the swans, the best bird was a distant red grouse.