Christine's walking & birds blog

The shoveler was Greger's find at Poolewe on Monday - after I'd assured him all the ducks dabbling in the shallow water near the beach were mallards. Oops.


In the roadside tangle of grass, weeds, and thistles was my first painted lady this year. It chased a large hawker dragonfly, displaying the strong flight that would be expected of a migratory butterfly.


A trip to Achnahaird today was a mistake; I've hurt my knee quite badly and could only limp around a small area. But I saw half a dozen golden plover, five black-tailed and one bar-tailed godwit, good numbers of dunlin and ringed plover, and five curlews. Meadow pipits, pied wagtails, and wheatears were running about on the cliff-tops.

Best of all were four sanderling which flew in and foraged on the shore.


These tiny waders (probably juveniles) have come from their breeding grounds in the high Arctic - a phrase that seems to ring with the very essence of cool, wild places. Several wader species breed in the high Arctic but sanderling and knot, according to the BWP, are "the most exclusively super-cold forms on open, northernmost parts of the circumpolar tundra".