Wednesday, November 05, 2014
First snow! I drove north to the recycling road plantation for some birding, and only as I came away and looked south did I realise that there was a sprinkling of snow on Beinn Dearg and (below) An Teallach.
I took this snap of the "rubbish road" a couple of days ago, with the Stornoway ferry coming in.
Today I saw a goldcrest, while a treecreeper was a nice surprise, and a flock in the tops of the trees gave me my first fieldfares of the winter. But no firecrest. On the other hand, no second goldcrest, either. The firecrest reported in Gairloch seems to have vanished from birdguides, but instead there is one reported from Loch of Strathbeg, Aberdeenshire on the same day I saw mine. I can't be 100% sure, but it looks as though I might have let my first Scottish firecrest slip through my fingers!
Meanwhile, there were 29 eider duck in Ullapool harbour - five of them adult males in breeding plumage. And Greger's brother phoned from Sweden with the news that there are 500-600 whooper swans on his neighbour's fields!
// posted by Christine @ 7:51 AM 
