Christine's walking & birds blog

A buzzard was circling above the road as we drove through Coigach on this lovely day - and just beyond, a golden eagle was being mobbed by a raven.



A white-winger was alone in a corner of the beach at Achnahaird. It was being dive-bombed by great black-backed gulls, but these flew off as we made our way across the dunes to get behind and sunward of what looked like an Iceland gull. The wing-tips protruded well beyond the tail and the bill looked stubby in comparison with the bill of a glaucous.



The gull lifted off and circled round several times before landing back in the same place. I failed to catch it in my shots, but the primaries looked bright white against the darker parts of the wings.


A long-tailed drake was diving out beyond the breakers.


Much further out, a Slavonian grebe was keeping company with two female common scoters and one of the great northern divers did a spot of tremolo-calling.

Down at Old Dornie, a white-tailed eagle was spotted from the car flying purposefully out to sea.


Calling back in at the beach car-park we found the light much worse. I still couldn't quite identify the auks I could see way out on the bay - guillemots and razorbills were probably both present though alas! no little auks - but we were compensated by Greger's find of a red-throated diver.


The sheep were determined to walk along the road and crowd round us; and after we'd edged our way past, they turned and stood staring after us.


Perhaps the farmer gives them supplementary feed from a vehicle and they regard every car as a potential source of nosh.