Tuesday, June 30, 2015
It was strange to be in bustling Inverness and to look at Ben Wyvis across the river and know that up there on the airy heights are ptarmigan and dotterel.....
We ate lunch outside at Johnny Foxes and although it was a mite windy, it was a warm wind. Has summer really arrived at last in the Highlands? Swifts were a nice sight as they're scarce on the west coast.
We walked upstream away from the city centre. A dipper was making use of a fallen tree in dappled sunlight near the first bridge onto the islands.
Driving away from Inverness later I spotted an osprey from the Kessock Bridge; and as we got out of the car at home we saw, oddly enough, two swifts winging away over the roof-tops.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
That's a blooming big vole! Perhaps it's a rat - the tail seems rather long for a vole.
Although carrying prey, the buzzard apparently continued to hunt over the moorland southeast of Ledmore Junction, before swinging away to one of the forestry plantations.
A dry spell three days ago inspired me to walk up the quarry road in a last desperate quest for wood warbler song. Nothing. However, a large sawfly was interesting because the yellow clubs to its antennae point to the ID of birch sawfly (Cimbex femoratus). It also seems to have the enlarged hind legs seen on Cimbicidae.
(The posting on this blog for June 21, 2009, shows a pic of what I initially thought was this species; but the antennae on that insect are all-dark, and it was probably a Trichiosoma sawfly, either triangulum or lucorum.)
All well and good. Except that this sawfly, like the Trichiosoma I spotted on June 4 last year, was on goat willow. And all the information I can find states that the female lays her eggs on birch, as that is what the larva exclusively feeds on. There were two flies present, and now and then they would fly up and mate in the air, both coming down to land in the tree.
At the turning-point of my walk, a loud humming was heard from a shady hollow ringed round with birches. A rather battered bee-hive stands there, which I had assumed was disused - but looking more closely, I now noticed the ropes and gleaming new chain holding it down. There was certainly plenty of activity on the landing board, but it soon became clear that all was not well. The bees were concentrated around a narrow opening, but individuals would break away and fight, usually in twos - rolling over and over until they dropped off the edge of the board. It was one massive battle. When I got home I googled this and read that honey bees will rob other hives; during food shortages, or just because the other hive is weaker. The attacked bees will defend their nest to the death; so what I saw was serious stuff. Something new learnt, anyway.
On the way back down it began to rain. Near the bottom, a slow worm was idling along across the road, stopping every now and then, and I became aware simultaneously of a vehicle coming up the quarry road. So I bent down and tried to encourage it into the safety of the verge. Looking up I realised the car had parked just below the cattle grid, and the driver was walking towards me. It was Greger, who was worried about me in the sudden violent downpour and had come to give me a lift home. I still don't recognise the new car!
He asked what I was doing and I replied "Chivvying a slow worm" which he found hilarious. The sad thing is, as a girl I would simply have picked it up, but I've become a bit more squeamish with age. Another sad thing (about today) is that I didn't see one single butterfly. This summer is a bummer.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Our visitors left at the weekend; and this picture of a snipe in the pearly wet grass illustrates the kind of weather we had the week they were here (well - the kind of weather we've had all summer so far). We were mortified when day after day dawned grey and windy.
The figure is 6 Times by Anthony Gormley. Quite why we need naked statues of him all over the place is beyond me. Anyway, you can just see the terns lined up along the right-hand side, with a few others dotted about.
Today: Greger has a shocking cold and wanted to sleep, so after I'd done the shopping and other domestic duties I drove out to Achnahaird.
I walked along the cliff-tops towards Reiff, hoping to see an Arctic skua - but all I saw was bonxies. Stonechats are obviously breeding here in the bracken; the adult male and a juvenile male both kept up a constant chorus of "whee-chack" as I passed.
I spotted a glaucous gull from the road - and watched in despair as a dog walker went down the bank from the high lay-by and crossed the river. You can just see the very white glaucous taking flight along the channel to the left.
However, once the pair had walked out onto the machair, the gull doubled back and landed in the same place; and I was able to drive to the lay-by and then walk down myself to get a closer look. Is the same glaucous? Is it even a pure glaucous? If so, the biscuit-coloured dotting and barring is giving way to whiter plumage with a grey mantle, while the iris is pale. Dunno.
Other things of note: a pair of black-throated divers was on the sea at Badentarbat; and a male wheatear was feeding a fledgling on the beach. Up the hill on a telegraph post, a female cuckoo was being mobbed by two food-carrying meadow pipits (I thought at first it was a young cuckoo being fed by foster parents - something I've never seen.)
There was a light shower this morning, and no sun all day. It's difficult to believe that the summer solstice has been and gone. Midsummer is over, and we've had no summer at all. After the cold summer of last year when England had a golden heatwave, it's hard not to get a bit depressed. But I did know all this before we moved here so I shouldn't moan.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Just under the grassy overhang where the slope has collapsed, dozens of sand martins have their nests.
It's good to see a pair of lapwings nesting after last summer's dearth of these birds; the photo was taken from the car in a lay-by.
The cuckoo was haunting a new place for me, where an interesting stream cascaded down between birches and rowans. I'd been hoping for a wood warbler but heard only chaffinches.
Best of all was my first whinchat of the year. Again I sat in the car and watched it; but distance, and a background lacking contrast, made focusing difficult for the camera.
Pity, because he was a little smasher.
Monday, June 08, 2015
Conival
Or, as I renamed it, Whinging Hill: and I was the one doing the whinging. To begin with I didn't feel that well. Then I realised I'd forgotten the compass - for the first time in all our years of hill-walking. Next, it began to rain, and it was discovered that Greger was wearing the wrong trousers - rather than the waterproofs Goody Two-Shoes herself had on. All in all I was fairly cross as we left the road and set off up the River Traligill. We decided we'd just enjoy a walk and not necessarily go up the hill at all.
This settled, birds were on hand to cheer me up further. Willow warblers were singing unseen. Sand martins, house martins, and swallows swooped low over our heads, and a spotted flycatcher was glimpsed in riverbank trees. A cuckoo flew across the valley. Two mistle thrushes flew over churring and a pair of house sparrows gave me a hill-walking tick. Stonechats and wheatears were further up beyond the few houses. Still further up, a juvenile ring ouzel flew onto a rock just above the path, and a male appeared on the opposite bank of the stream with a beakful of worms.
The day was dull with light spatters of rain, and our hill was cloaked in cloud; but by the time we'd walked several kilometres up the valley we decided we would continue. Negotiating a horribly boggy patch with peat hags we got onto a path that was like a stream of white rocks; very hard walking. A family of ravens enlivened this steep stretch, as three juveniles chased an adult carrying a prey item. The fifth bird came to check us out and assert his territorial rights.
After the path of white stones came an enjoyable short scramble up a rock band, and then a plod up to the col. Looking back, I saw two white-winged birds flying up the hillside. The ptarmigans landed among grey rocks where they were difficult to pick out, the male looking on while the female poked about among the boulders (she can just be seen at the bottom of the picture).
Crikey, the bird list was growing; would this hill-walk knock An Socach (Braemar) with its thirteen species off the top spot? Meanwhile, from the col and still below the cloud, we got views north-eastwards over the lochan in Coire a'Mhadaidh.
Turning south for the last pull to the summit, we were overtaken by a younger, Scottish couple. The man said in passing what awful weather it was for June. We later passed the woman, who was sitting down; she said she had done Conival and come back down to wait for her husband - who was going on to do Ben More Assynt. And this was the thing: you do these two Munroes together because there's no realistic way to go up Ben More Assynt except from Conival; and having gained most of the height, it should be a simple task to continue along the linking ridge and bag your second top. But the mist was down and we didn't have a compass. There were no route-finding problems but even ridges can be confusing when you can't see, and there are quartzite slabs that can be lethal when wet. Anyway, we bashed on to the summit of Conival - or at least Greger did, while I brought up the rear.
In the end we decided against Ben More Assynt, and started back almost immediately. I went round a patch of snow while Greger walked across, after wondering if he could ski it!
Dropping down a very steep bit on the quartzite screes above the col I slipped, tripped, and sort of did the splits; but somehow recovered, landing on my right knee. A walker coming up had seen this and kindly asked if I was okay. I assured him I was with thanks, but I felt such a fool. A string of oldish men came up just after him. We sat down after this and had lunch, and again saw two ptarmigans flying past and landing out of sight.
Soon we were back to the rock band, where Greger scrambled down first and took a pic with his mobile.
As we dropped down through the muddy area, some sweet notes half-heard through the noise of a waterfall alerted us to the presence of a dipper. It was very active and soon disappeared. A short while afterwards, a grey wagtail flew upstream.
On steep, wet grass it was Greger's turn to fall. He slipped and ended up front down; but the worst he suffered was muddy knees. Soon after this we were back on the narrow path traversing the steep river bank; this interesting narrow groove offered an alternative to the path above which came to an abrupt halt where the bank had collapsed.
Where the river widened out beneath the trees, I snapped one of at least two spotted flycatchers.
I count all birds seen during a hill-walk, until the moment I get back to the car. And that's why this osprey will appear on the list, even though I was on the road at the time. But where did it get its prey? Either the river or nearby Loch Assynt, presumably.
The walk was about 15 kilometres, over a variety of terrains, and overall quite a tough one. Other birds seen: wren, robin, chaffinch, siskin, song thrush, willow warbler, and meadow pipit. And a promising coniferous plantation just up the hill from the path rang with si-si calls that suggested tits or gold crests; but I was too tired to investigate. As it was, the walk gave us twenty-two species, which makes Conival the best birding hill-walk I've done. Truly the "enchanted hill" of its English translation (although, while we were still struggling up it or alternatively, falling down it, other adjectives did come to mind).
Friday, June 05, 2015
On the northern shore of the Cromarty Firth, oil rigs in for repair provide a dramatic backdrop to a tidal lagoon where about 100 Canada geese are grazing on a grassy spit.
We had parked in a lay-by on the busy A9, climbed a dilapidated stile and walked across this fascinating area known as Alness Point, seeing mergansers, oystercatchers, ringed plover, Eider, and shelduck. The shingle spit on the right of the picture below holds nesting Arctic and common terns.
A small brown bird foraging on the path turned out to be a tree sparrow. It came as a bit of a surprise; I had vaguely known that you could see tree sparrows on the east coast - I just hadn't remembered that it was here. Googling later at home, I learnt that nest-boxes have been provided for a small breeding colony. A yellowhammer was also noteworthy. This was two days ago; yesterday I didn't even bother to go out, the weather was so awful. Although today the wind has died down it's still raining; and while not as cold as it has been, it cannot be said to be warm. It feels as if summer is once again slipping away without having really begun.
