Christine's walking & birds blog

The longest day has been and gone, and it feels as though the year is failing. Which is silly really, because there are still two months of summer to come.

We drove to Nairn on the east coast, walking along the sands towards the Culbin Bar to look for Sandwich terns. A common tern hobnobs with some of them here.


Five goosanders went flying along the beach to the west.


We walked back against a strong wind, pausing to watch sand martins swoop into their holes in the bank at the back of the beach - these are at eye level, so you get great views of the birds in flight.  Hundreds and hundreds of starlings flew along the marshy area between beach and forest, and went down in the long grass - we could hear the rush of their wings as they passed; I reckon there must have been at least a thousand. And I made two mistakes today; hearing a bird in the trees, I was sure it was a crossbill. Greger said he thought it was a chaffinch. It finally showed itself - and it was a chaffinch. In the grassy area, a large bird flew up from the ground but disappeared immediately behind the gorse. I walked round the gorse to see if I could see it, but Greger said "It was only a wood pigeon." It was only a wood pigeon. I'm getting desperate.

Thank goodness for the great outdoors. I drove to Rhue in the afternoon, but I'd just made my way down to the beach when huge dark clouds bunched up above the mountains and thunder rumbled ominously in the distance.

I noticed with surprise that there were tadpoles in a pool in a long narrow crevice in the rocks - though whether this was a genuine seawater rock-pool or a rain puddle, I don't know (but then we haven't had much rain recently).

I walked back up to the car through the bracken as the first drops fell and the thunder drew nearer, but got distracted by a large fritillary flying low across the path. The lovely underwing showed it to be a dark green fritillary.


I sat in the car and watched the storm break, with flashes of lightning and torrential rain; there was no wind, so as long as the clouds sat there, the rain poured down. It was quite nice, after the prolonged dry spell we've had, to see the hill streams come back to life.

A glaucous gull (I think) was lounging around on the spit with other large gulls, miles away across half a beach and the river. Its plumage is interesting at the moment, shifting from one stage to the next.


A goosander flew over, then round in a circle, and finally settled on the water at the mouth of the river to do some fishing before hauling out onto a rock and preening. I think it's a male in eclipse plumage.


Although I heard a dunlin and then a curlew call, I couldn't get onto them before the rain started falling. As I left the river spit, I heard a sort of buzzing from the bushes and then saw a whitethroat carrying food. Whitethroats were here last year in late summer, and the year before in spring - but I wasn't sure if they were just passing through. Proof of breeding at last.

Back in April, I got pictures of five common terns on a buoy from the ferry crossing the Sound of Harris. The aim today was to see and get some pictures of an Arctic tern. It wasn't easy. There were many common and some Arctic terns, and we couldn't always tell which were which. And then they look as though they're flying quite slowly, and you just manage to get them in the viewfinder when they stop in mid air, turn, and dive. Well, that's why we love 'em.



Greger, watching through his new bins, said "He's caught something!" and I just managed a shot as he flew away.


Just after the little tern disappeared, a violent shower of rain swept in and soaked us; but it soon passed over, and the sun was warm enough to dry us out.

A three-spined stickleback was close to the bank in the Ullapool River on Saturday; the pink fuzzy mass to the left is his nest.


The osprey was fishing on the Cromarty Firth today, in between attacks by gulls.


Common and Arctic terns were also present, and a pair of mergansers were near the end of the spit with young.

Meall a' Ghiubhais

We started off hopefully up the Mountain Trail in the Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve, as the Met Office had forecast clear weather for the tops. The trail can be used to reach two Corbetts, although one was enough for us today.  The pleasant pine woods (we thought we heard crossbills at one point) eventually peter out, and the trail, with its steps cut into the rock, takes you high into rugged country.

  
Nearing the highest point on the trail we could see our hill, and somewhere past the lochan we would leave the trail for the last pull to the summit ridge. At this point, the weather still looked promising.


But as we began the trudge up the hill, the cloud started to close in. Robbed of views, I concentrated on small things. A frog hopped out of the way and sat motionless on a stone. Thrift and moss made a mountain rockery.


A tiny flower gave me some trouble with ID, as I assumed it had four white petals. But it turns out these are bracts (a specialised leaf) and the purple centre is the actual flower. It's called Dwarf Cornel.


When we reached the top of the slope, we could see nothing; but Greger led the way unerringly along the ridge to the cairn on what we thought at the time was the lower top.


The idea is then to walk along the summit plateau to the south-west to gain the higher top (by 10 metres). So we took the map and compass out and I took a reading first, swinging round to point out the route back the way we had come.

And here is where we made our mistake. We had a preconceived idea of where we ought to be heading. We thought we should be continuing on from this cairn, and because of this I assumed I had taken the compass reading from the map wrongly. I tried again and then it seemed that the compass needle wasn't moving properly. Where was north? We started to speculate wildly about magnetic rocks. This is well-known on Skye, where a compass can be unreliable in the Cuillins; but I hadn't heard of it on the mainland. And you can have a compass swing round 180º - it's happened to us; but we'd used this one very recently and it was fine.

We continued a little way further along the ridge, and it seemed to me that there was no higher ground ahead. A cold wind had now sprung up and we decided we'd had enough. The wonderful views of the Torridon mountains and along Loch Maree to the sea were not going to be ours, and we were disappointed enough not to care about reaching the actual top. But before we started to descend, we saw movement among the rocks in the mist - a ptarmigan with three or four chicks!




Bird-wise, the ptarmigan family had "saved the hill". We sat on a steep slope and had a belated lunch, and then made our way down over an unstable boulder field carpeted in places with bright green moss that had a habit of detaching itself from the hillside without warning, taking us with it. We found it preferable to slither and slide down the ribbons of scree - and they were bad enough! It was a relief to reach more level ground, just above the rocky plateau with the lochans, and the Mountain Trail that would take us back down to the road on the southern shore of Loch Maree.


Researching the whole walk at home with the maps and his new Garmin device, Greger realised how we had got muddled on the summit ridge - and the upshot was that my original reading from map to ground was correct. Unless you know anything to the contrary - always trust your compass! (Much later: I'm convinced after much research with maps and from other walkers' accounts on the walkhighlands website, that we did reach the higher, south-western top. It makes no sense otherwise.)

A couple who were also birdwatching stopped to chat, and turned out to be hillwalkers too. They told us they'd just seen a wood warbler, so we countered with our woodcock sighting of yesterday. We walked back to the car slowly and saw a spotted flycatcher again, on a low branch just beyond some going-to-seed bluebells.


Greger said he would go and read the paper if I wanted to linger. I told him he wouldn't see the wood warbler in that case, and he reminded me that he's only a semi-birder.

I concentrated on some trees where I'd heard a faint call that I had put down to young siskins; and sure enough I had a brief glimpse of a wood warbler carrying food. It started to rain, so I left it in peace. It was lovely to see a wood warbler, but I missed the buzz of finding a bird for myself.

From thick undergrowth at the side of the path two lovely reddish woodcocks erupted and flew off through the trees. One was squeaking and had a fluttering sort of flight, and I saw the long, downward-pointing bill as it turned a bend in the path. It continued to squeak and then came fluttering out again and followed the flight-path of the other one down the hill.

We walked on, and were discussing whether they had both been young birds when a woodcock came flying from our left across the path, twisting and turning before it, too, vanished. We agreed that this one was definitely an adult bird.

A spotted flycatcher was seen nearby.

Some butterflies at last! A walk up to the Inverkirkaig Falls near Lochinver was cheered by half a dozen small pearl-bordered fritillaries in the heather.



Something had to cheer us, given the masses of midges around on this warm, absolutely still day. We heard a cuckoo and a blackcap, and saw several willow warblers and a blue tit. Another of the fritillaries was seen by the side of Loch Assynt on the way home, together with a small heath butterfly.


Apparently these butterflies are known for almost always keeping their wings folded when settled. A beautiful golden-ringed dragonfly was patrolling the air space nearby.

The dunlin was one of two on the beach at Poolewe on this warm sunny day.


A saunter along the forest walk opposite Inverewe Gardens brought a very high spotted flycatcher.

A walk up the quarry road in hot sunshine brought no dragonflies and no butterflies. Where I turned for home a tree pipit was displaying, and I sat in the heather and watched and listened to him for about fifteen minutes.


Beyond the higher quarry and the river, dark dots on the bracken-clad slopes were teenagers, probably doing Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme stuff.


Dark clouds were moving in from the south, slowly eating up the blue sky; and mindful of the recent lightning strikes on the continent, I set off for home.


A couple of deep rumbles of thunder came when I was opposite the lower quarry, and Greger phoned to say he would come and get me.  In the end, there was no storm and only a small shower of rain, but the lift home from the walkers' car park was still welcome.

The rosy redpoll was one of two displaying vigorously at last year's grasshopper warbler site.


A bit further north, a golden eagle was over moorland to the west of the road, being mobbed by two buzzards.



I pulled over into a lay-by where a couple were having breakfast in their camper van and grabbed a shot before the raptors all disappeared towards the sea.

A black-throated diver was on a road-side loch.


At the other end of the loch, in gravelly shallows, small fish as rosy as the redpoll were leaping vertically out of the water. It seemed that other, larger fish, were predating them. Now and then you would catch sight of a fin and a back - but it was impossible to tell exactly what was going on. This picture's caught something - but what? With the strange half-seen forms of the fish and the odd texture of the water, you can imagine all sorts of weird monsters thrashing about.


The sand martin bank seemed deserted, although after a twenty-minute wait, one bird was seen to zoom into a hole and then leave. A singing whinchat was also here - my third this summer.


The weather has changed today, with a strong wind and some rain.

Beinn Liath Mhor Fannaich

The hill in the centre of the picture with the long patch of snow was our destination. Instead of walking along the river, however, we set off in the opposite direction and followed the track up through the plantation.