Christine's walking & birds blog

The whinchat was again on wires in the Coigach area, on a day of blue sky and sunshine but with a persistent wind from the north.


I ate lunch on the beach at Badentarbat, serenaded by a wheatear. I've seen only one female wheatear this year. A whooper swan was far out on Loch Vatachan, seemingly being mildly hectored by great black-backed gulls. It hauled out onto a grassy islet and went to sleep. Two sedge warblers were singing.

Two common sandpipers flew past me along the short stream flowing out from Loch Raa and went down on the stones and bank.



Where the stream runs out onto the sand, a greenshank was feeding. It might have been the strong wind, but its plumage sometimes looked rather disordered as though it was beginning to moult. A failed breeder? Or perhaps a successful breeder, given that I saw my first greenshank of the year here in February.


On the way home I pulled in to see if the whinchat I saw earlier this year was still there - and it was, so that's definitely two individuals. But I've yet to see a female - although it's possible they are sitting on eggs, I suppose.

Sgorr na Diollaid

When we left the car a cuckoo and a willow warbler were singing unseen and a redpoll was displaying, with brief rests between its song flights.


This is the beginning of our hill; but beyond the highest point in the picture there is quite a lot more of it - most of it boggy. The photo was taken at the end of the day, as the morning was glum and the tops wreathed in cloud.


Two common gulls were on the fields by the river, and a little way up, a male stonechat was heard and finally located some distance away. Near the knoll on the left, I lost my Lowe Alpine mountain cap; and then we lost the view back down into the valley, and headed north.

The going was soft and soggy; big cushions of sphagnum moss - beautiful to look at but tiring to walk on - and wet, reedy grass. We were quite high (650-700m) when I paused to look down at Loch Craskie, and caught sight of a red grouse.


Two more dips and rises lay between us and the summit; but at last we had it in view. The name is said to mean "peak of the saddle" - and you can see why.


A meadow pipit was the only bird seen near the summit.


It was an easy scramble up onto the eastern pinnacle, and difficult to tell whether this or the second one was the higher.


I thought the rocks on the western pinnacle were too slippery to clamber up - until Greger showed that it could be done; and after he'd got down I went up (not enough room for two). Someone has planted a stick there - a bit like the flags and things they leave on Everest - so perhaps this one is the summit.


Once more, the top of a Corbett repaid all the tedious boggy effort of reaching it! We sat in the shelter of the rocks and had lunch before descending the same way. This is looking east, showing the interesting summit mix of slabby rocks, narrow pools, and peat hags.


To the south lay Glen Cannich with its winding river; in the distance is the dam on Loch Mullardoch, and beyond are some fairly remote Munros.


To the north is Glen Strathfarrar, with yet more hard-to-reach three thousand footers in the background.


The descent was hard work - but I did find my hat. It's old, the wire in the peak is broken, and I recently bought a new one - but I still keep wearing the old one and I was pleased to see it again.

Greger spotted a buzzard as we neared the bottom of the hill, and three swallows were hunting low over the farm fields and the river. Mistle thrush fledgelings were being fed by attentive parents, and redpolls were still performing song flights over the birches.

We went to Eden Court Centre in Inverness yesterday, to see Chimes at Midnight - Orson Welles' cinematic version of three of Shakespeare's history plays. There were six of us in the audience!

We came out into a light shower, which was an improvement on the thunder-and-lighting and torrential rain that had marked our arrival. The car was parked by a high wall, and looking through the wrought iron gates into a rather elegant sports ground (turns out it's the home of the Northern Counties Cricket Club) we saw our first oystercatcher chick of the year.


Driving over the river, we saw our first swifts of the year.

Today, at least 23 dunlin were on the beach in the Coigach area with ringed plovers. The beach was busy with kayakers and coastal rowers, and the waders constantly flew up and down. Eventually, I walked out to where the tide was uncovering the sand, thinking the waders had gone; but then I realised they were foraging in the tide-wrack, where it was difficult to see them - especially when they were among the yellowish, slippery stuff that always reminds me of the pale type of lasagne when it's been softened in boiling water (hmm - I haven't made a lasagne in ages, must do one soon).


I also realised that I was between them and the sea, and when two of them stopped feeding, I thought they'd be off. But in fact, the two of them came slightly closer and promptly went to sleep. Need overcame any wariness, I suppose; and I passed quite close to them as I made my way up the beach without disturbing them.

I took a walk along the cliffs in quite warm sunshine. A king eider has been in the area for some weeks, and it would have been churlish not to scan the common eider and so miss a spectacular duck just because I'm not a twitcher - but they were too far out to be seen well in any case, so the king eider remains a potential self-found lifer. A cuckoo was seen in the distance, and a skylark and a sedge warbler were singing.


A whinchat was singing on a wire.



A male stonechat was a bit further along on the same wire; and a willow warbler sang from a gorse bush. The warbler was quite close to me, and despite its sweet, rather restrained song, it managed to drown out the more distant whinchat.


Three great skuas were bathing in Loch Vatachan, another sedge warbler was heard singing, and the only raptor seen all day was a buzzard.

Last spring I photographed a reeling grasshopper warbler on bog myrtle; today a reed bunting was using the same song-post.


It was all reddish-brown catkins and no leaves in last year's picture, reminding me that the warbler had already been heard and then seen by now, so I probably have to accept that it's not here. Several willow warblers and a cuckoo were heard.

The osprey was at Udale Bay on the Black Isle.


The east coast was warmer and drier than the west today - at least for a while. But mid-afternoon a cool breeze sprang up and brought rain, and in any case the tide was miles out taking the waders with it - so after watching some common terns on the far side of the Cromarty Firth we gave up and drove home.

There were at least thirty ringed plovers and at least sixty dunlin on the sports field at Aultbea.


Also present: two song thrushes, a robin, a wheatear, three twite, a willow warbler, and a singing sedge warbler.

When we got home, a herring gull was on the feeders.


The gulls are getting to be a bit of a problem, and we might have to stop feeding the birds in the garden altogether.

The bright sunshine today did little to combat an icy wind blowing straight down from the north. At Badentarbat a whimbrel was on the beach with a dunlin.

Driving away across the moorland, I saw two downy balls on the single-track road. The three drivers behind me had to wait as I got out and chivvied the stonechat chicks onto the verge - I did thank them.

The sedge warbler was heard as I got out of the car, at a spot where I thought I saw one last summer. It was singing in rowans at the side of the road.



North of Ardmair, a cuckoo flew across the road; and a quick check of last year's grasshopper warbler site brought no reeling.

A pleasing two-toned trill drew us into the forest at Rosehall, although we'd only parked there to eat our lunch. A family group of crossbills seemed the likely culprits; and there was also some of the song that I've heard just once before - in Swinley Forest, Berkshire.



Enticing though the forest was, we left and pressed on to our real destination - Raven's Rock Gorge. The last time we tried to visit, it was closed; we'd assumed they were just doing some necessary tree work. It was open today, but as we walked it dawned on us what had happened here - and when.

We found the place by chance two years ago (August 9, under blog post August 10 2014), and followed the path to a quite exciting boardwalk and flight of steps along the rugged bank of the Allt Mor, climbing up through the trees and returning through lovely woods to the car park - a shortish but good circular walk. The information board today showed not a round walk, but two there-and-back routes. Following the lower path first, we came to a large clearing that we didn't remember, and remarked on the number of trees that were down. This was as far as we could get on the old path - and even there, we were standing on the roots of a fallen pine.


That first visit had been on August 9, 2014 - and two days later the tail-end of Hurricane Bertha hit the Highlands. I'm not 100% sure this happened then, but certainly at some point massive landslides have occurred, bringing trees crashing down as banks partially collapsed.

Above us, trees clung on to bluffs of rock that looked ready to crumble at any moment.


Returning to the start, we took the high route and looked down on part of the destroyed riverside walk.



I don't think they'll ever be able to reopen the boardwalk after that. Meanwhile, in the midst of all this destruction, a spotted flycatcher was a cheering sight.


On the way home, Greger drove onto the forest track at Craggie and I walked up to check on the amphibian ditch. After three days with no rain and some quite hot sunshine, the ditch had dried up in many places and the remaining water was rather green and slimy. But some tadpoles had evidently survived this far; the others having presumably been eaten by newts - I saw at least five individuals. The picture shows the webbed hind feet of a male palmate newt.


We stopped briefly by Loch Borralan, and were surprised when a bird perching near the top of reeds turned out to be a singing willow warbler. A cuckoo was on wires at the road-side; and sand martins have returned to their nesting holes on the bank of the Ledmore River.

Two cuckoos had been calling unseen, and I'd been enjoying listening to them as I looked (in vain) for a grasshopper warbler. Then all hell broke loose as the cuckoos came dashing down the hill scrapping as they flew. They would land on the pole and wires or a nearby tree and then start again, only flying off when I tried to get closer.


That was two days ago, and early this morning there was no sign of any cuckoos - and again, no sign of a grasshopper warbler. The weather at the moment is dry and sunny - even hot when you can get out of the wind. But the wind is formidably strong - and small birds are hunkering down and maybe not singing. Except for willow warblers, which don't necessarily find a prominent song-post but seem to sing in a rather absent-minded manner as they move through the trees foraging.

And the whinchat I'd hoped for was out in the open - if at a distance.


He flew closer and sang - but from the heather rather than a fence post.


Naturally, the moment I switched the camera to video, he stopped singing. But I decided to leave him in peace; he must have been aware of me, even though I was sitting in the car. A nice way to start the day.

A tree pipit's song stopped me in my tracks during a walk this afternoon.


My first blackcap of the year was heard and then seen, and a cuckoo was heard but not seen. Swallows were swooping and diving, a chiffchaff sang defiantly in the midst of the ubiquitous willow warbler song, and a pair of stonechats scolded from the gorse. A slow worm was on the track.

A note for Friday's post: My first lizard of the year was seen on the descent, and there was a new tick for my hill-walking bird list with grey heron. This makes 63 species in all over the years.

Creag Rainich

The weather was windy and showery as we set off on a 6 kilometre walk-in along Loch a' Bhraoin. A cuckoo called distantly beyond the plantation, and a willow warbler sang from the conifers. Along the loch our companions were pied wagtails and common sandpipers.


The white house at Lochivraon (part of the Inverbroom Estate) has bars on the windows and doors, but the paintwork is kept up. The red roof just showing behind the house is a bothy.


We sat down on a grassy bank for a drink and were serenaded by the hollow drumming of snipe. At first we weren't sure if the sound was a bird or the thrumming of fence wires in the wind. Then two snipe were seen flying high above and plummeting to the marshy ground at the head of the loch. We left the track here, skirting the fence and beginning the long, tiring plod up rough boggy ground behind the house. As we gained height, so the loveliness and the loneliness of Lochivraon's setting became more apparent.


At around the 690m contour, Greger heard a golden plover. Just after this he stopped and pointed to a grassy hummock just ahead; and as we walked on carefully, a dunlin emerged. This was only my second dunlin on a hill-walk.



As the dunlin walked away a golden plover was seen on the skyline, his mate also showing herself briefly.


Cheered by these sightings, we toiled on. At last the terrain began to change from muddy bogs to dry, firm vegetation on rock, and we gained the first top. It was a bit disheartening to see that the dip between here and the main top was deeper than I'd realised, but at least we could now see the summit.


As Greger forged ahead, I peeped into a small pool - and made a macabre discovery. Several frogs were visible on the bottom, but even before closer inspection, their absolute stillness indicated that they were dead. Their eyes were a milky blue. There was some frogspawn in the pool, but that didn't look healthy either. (Later: there is a photo on the internet from 2010 of dead frogs resembling these, all at the bottom of a dew pond in Derbyshire; that pond was iced over, and the cause of death was reckoned to be either intense cold or lack of oxygen. My blog entries both sides of this post contain the phrases "ice cold", "freezing cold", "freezing cold wind" - and this was at sea-level. This pool lay at 720m, or 2,362ft.)


In hill-walking days gone by, I was often the one ahead; but what with encroaching age and having to investigate the wildlife, the following picture has become a familiar sight to me - Greger reaching the top first.


But I made it at last - with the bonus of a new trig point to bag.


The trig point stands on the summit at 807m (2,647ft).


The showers stopped and there were some sunny spells, so we stayed on the top and had our lunch, looking across a snow patch to An Teallach (pic from Greger's mobile) with the sea mistily visible beyond.


Walking out onto a western spur we looked across the Fisherfield Forest - home to some of the most remote Munros in Scotland. The high tops here are Mullach Coire Mhic Fhearchair and, to the right of the deep col, Sgurr Ban. Meallan an Laoigh is the small hill in the foreground with a buttress-like appearance. What caught the eye however was the vast slabs of quartzite, sloping down to the unseen Loch an Nid and looking (as Greger said) like a flow of hardened volcanic lava.


And in the foreground, presumably unimpressed by all this stunning scenery, was a female wheatear, doing what wheatears do wherever they find themselves; standing upright and motionless - and then making short, stooping runs across the grass.


We set off back to the east, but following high ground for as long as possible to cut out some of the stony track along the loch-side. Meadow pipits foraged at the edge of snow patches.


I noted some ptarmigan droppings, but it was Greger once again who got onto the birds themselves - a male and a female, scuttling reluctantly away - at around 600m. The female hid behind a rock, while the male walked a little way uphill, keeping us in sight before dropping down until only his head was showing - and then nothing.




After a lot of steep, boggy work we eventually reached the track where we sat down for a rest and a chocolate bar (we still had 4 kilometres to go). Midges were a bother but for once the insect repellant seemed to work. It was a beautiful sunny evening. The water on the loch was calmer than in the morning, and common sandpipers were still zooming about.



The walk was over 16 kilometres long and by the time we reached the car, we were pretty tired. At the end of the loch we converged with happy Munro-baggers coming down from the Fannichs. But I wouldn't have swapped. Our hill might be a bit of a boggy pudding and "only" a Corbett, but we'd had it to ourselves, the birds had been brilliant - and the summit views were second to none.