Christine's walking & birds blog

We left home at eight o'clock this morning and were in Aviemore by ten. Greger dropped me off in Glen More and then took the funicular railway up into the Cairngorms to do some downhill ski-ing; I planned to walk round Loch Morlich, seen in the picture he took on his mobile from the ski slopes.


I sort of hoped for crossbills and crested tits, but saw neither. Out in the middle of the loch were male and female goldeneye, and on the far side was a small group of tufted ducks (prized more highly here than down south, as they're rather more scarce).


In a patch of carr, two goldcrests foraged at ground level among half-drowned dead branches and sodden tufts of grass. In a drier area I climbed up a bank and sat on a root under a huge pine to eat my sandwiches. The sun came out and for a while, it felt quite warm.

Back near the road I crossed the footbridge over the Abhain Ruigh-eunachan and then spotted a dipper a short way downstream.


I was coming to the end of my walk and could now hear traffic on the road - but what else could I hear? I thought it was a tawny owl, but there were also voices coming from the loch where some people were out in a boat. Then, I thought I heard the second, longer, part of the call. I stood still, and realised that small birds were making quite a noise in the same location the sound had come from. That was a good sign that a tawny was present.

I walked to where the small birds were making a fuss, but they seemed to have dispersed. On the loch side were pines, and on the other, deciduous trees - mostly birches, a few of them gnarled and old. Somehow these seemed more likely to be the haunt of a tawny owl, so I spent a long time looking among them.  I was getting cold, and I prepared to go. Something made me look up into the nearby pines - and there, near the top, was the owl - seemingly looking down at me! It sat in a little gap of the foliage but with a spray of pine needles across its face and its half-closed eyes.



Greger had enjoyed his day of ski-ing, although he said it took him a while to get into it properly as he hasn't skied for about fifteen years. He was quite impressed with the ski area; it sounds as though it has been improved since I came ski-ing here back in the 1970s. I can't ski now but I'm not too sad - I was never very good at it anyway!

We stopped and took some pictures before driving home. The mountain railway runs up the northern flank of Cairn Gorm itself.


Just the outing and weather to lift the spirits after the gale-force winds and incessant rain of yesterday.