Thursday, January 14, 2016
We awoke to a sprinkling of snow this morning, and Greger wanted to try out his winter tyres; so we drove north, passing and being passed by a gritting truck depending on whether Greger wanted to get a move on, or I wanted to stop and look at a bird (which usually turned out to be a buzzard).
Although we started off in bright conditions it soon began to hail and then snow quite hard, but by the time we reached the car park at Kylesku Bridge there was another spell of dry weather. We looked down on the steely water, full of currents and whirlpools, of Loch a' Chairn Bhain, and saw quite a number of razorbills and guillemots.
They were fairly vocal, although the calls were like a short bark rather than the "growling" we heard here in May 2013, when the loch was dotted with even more auks than we saw today. Four immature kittiwakes were flying about below us, seeming to dive-bomb the auks now and then. On the far shore, a great black-backed gull landed on rocks with something round and pink - probably a sea urchin.
On the way back we called into the Loch Assynt car park; two drake goldeneye were diving in the bay near the ruined house.
Back in Ullapool we drove down onto West Shore Street, and a glaucous gull floated along the beach in front of us and went down on the waterline.
A very nice end to a dramatic day.
// posted by Christine @ 2:20 PM 
