Christine's walking & birds blog

Sunday April 19th

Moruisg

For our first hill-walk of the year we decided on two mountains in Glen Carron, one a Munro and the other a former Munro but now demoted. There was only one way up Moruisg from the lay-by; over the footbridge, under the railway, through the gate in the deer fence and then bashing straight up the boggy, often very steep flank right into the bright morning sun. This made watching out for birds very difficult. To gain the summit plateau, we were aiming for the wedge of land between the two converging gullies; the photo was taken on our descent.


We made heavy weather of it, discovering that we are not yet quite hill-fit; although a cold and irritating wind made things worse. But as ever on a fine day, the views were worth it. Between Greger and the cairn can be seen the two Torridon giants of Liathach and Beinn Eighe.


The plateau wound on eastwards, dipping and rising and enticing me onwards, to wander in the sunshine and hunt for plovers and ouzels; but there was no time and in any case, I was knackered.


I had to be content with a dozen or so meadow pipits foraging on the edge of a patch of snow.


We walked south-west along the summit ridge, and on reaching the higher summit cairn looked longingly across at Sgurr nan Ceannaichan. I'd grizzled a bit during the ascent and Greger had been uncharacteristically tetchy on the top when he couldn't find a good rock to sit on for lunch; so what with all the whinging plus the fact we were really tired, we decided to leave the second hill for another day.


Shame, because although it's lost its 3,000 ft status, it certainly looked a more interesting hill than the boggy lump we were on.


Birds were scarce. A greenshank was heard, possibly flying over. Making our way down we had a brief glimpse of a merlin as it came out from the ridge; down by the railway there was a wary male wheatear, and just as we reached the final gate a sand martin flew over.

On the way home I asked Greger to pull into a lay-by when I saw two Canada geese on a lochan. This is a species I wouldn't look twice at down south but I think these are my first in Scotland. On the near side of the spit of land are two greenshanks.




On Saturday, I paused in my walk along a forest track to see what was wriggling in this puddle. It contained about 100 tadpoles.



A bit further along a similar puddle contained no tadpoles, just a single newt.


The water was so clear the camera was able to focus. I think this is a female palmate newt, but not sure. I just hope no forestry vehicles drive along the track in the next week or so.