Christine's walking & birds blog

We drove to Achnahaird in what looked like promising weather from inside the car, and walked across the cliffs in a bitingly cold wind. The tide was high and there was nothing on the beach but a dead whooper swan.

As a sleety, stinging rain began to fall we walked quickly back to the car. There was nothing at Badentarbat, so we drove round the Polbain loop. In the fields where we saw barnacle geese before, we counted 26 today.


Turning away from the Reiff junction, we pulled into a passing place to make way for an approaching car - and I spotted a male red grouse, and then a female.



These were my first of the year. It felt wrong to be seeing and snapping them from a car, but there wasn't much else to do. It was far too cold and windy to walk far today; and as we turned north and climbed towards Knockan Crag, the rain turned to snow. Noticing that it was settling on the moorland down to the roadsides, we decided to head back to sea level - and rain.

In the afternoon the sun came out, so I went for a walk round the village. There was still a brambling along the river path with chaffinches.