Christine's walking & birds blog

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.

Taking them to Edinburgh for their flight, we stayed at the Leith Waterfront Premier Inn again; and this time I tracked down one of the nesting sites of the common terns.


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.