Christine's walking & birds blog

A rabbit was in the garden this morning, nibbling in the overgrown borders. It came bounding towards the house and then sat up to have a look around before hopping back into the undergrowth.


Going out into the garden a bit later, I heard rustling in the corner underneath the cypress and went to have a look - but it was a cat! Goodness knows what became of the rabbit. A few days ago, Greger found deer droppings on the lawn - the price of leaving the gate open at night.

In the afternoon I took a walk up the quarry road. Hearing a faint squeak, I looked down - onto the tiniest mouse I've ever seen. Sometimes the nose looked blunt, as though this was a baby bank vole. But from another angle the snout looked pointed, and in any case the tail is fairly long, so it was probably a young house mouse. It seemed completely unaware of me, coming very close and appearing at one point to contemplate clambering over my boot.


The best birds were several young willow warblers, lovely yellow splashes in the birches.

A sanderling with several dunlin on Badentarbat beach was my first real returning wader of the year.


One of the common gulls had caught a sand eel, and the other one was adopting a food-begging posture; not sure which one eventually flew away with it, though.


A great skua was loitering with intent.


Two rock pipits and a wheatear were on the beach, and two common terns were fishing close in. As I drove away from Achnahaird, I could see a distant greenshank wading in the river.

After two wet days spent indoors doing housework, we were called out by the sun to walk the Rubh a' Choin headland.


A family party of twite buzzed about among the rocks, and a flock of dunlin zoomed along the river and went down near the beach. Across the river on the salt-marsh, two ravens and a great black-backed gull disputed ownership of a sheep's carcass.


The beach car-park was rapidly filling up, and a few people were in the sea in wetsuits. Two children ran up the beach and splashed joyfully through a long shallow lagoon left there by the tide - I wouldn't have minded doing that myself. But although it was warm, the temperatures didn't reach the dizzy heights of the south of England, while a very soft, cooling sea breeze made sure we didn't get overheated.

If there's one thing that spoils this walk in the summer, it's the bracken. There are patches where it's shoulder-high and you have to push your way through - always being careful not to fall into one of the holes or gullies in the path. I wondered if it was good for anything other than the ticks which might be infected with Lyme Disease - and as if in answer, hundreds of magpie moths fluttered out. So they obviously like it!


We ate our lunch on the first, small headland; and while Greger took a phone call, I wandered about peering into rock-pools. Tiny fish darted under cover as I loomed over them, but one goby just froze until I'd moved on.


At least four adult gannets were fishing and the usual shags were diving, or preening and wing-drying on rocks. A great skua flew purposefully out to sea. Stonechats and a willow warbler were spotted, and rock pipits and oystercatchers were seen in several places.



There was no way we could approach the basking common seals without them taking fright, and the noise of them rushing into the sea was like the murmur of thunder. Luckily, the path then winds away from their cove, and they soon calmed down and went back.

This is English stonecrop. It's fairly common apparently, but that doesn't stop it being very pretty.


All too soon, it seemed, we could see Garvie Bay, where we would turn away from the sea and negotiate the boggiest part of the walk before coming out onto the road.


In the bay were Eider duck and mergansers. Much further out were a couple of black guillemots and two great northern divers.

Yesterday: Ben Wyvis (for the third time!)

We went up to find out if we can still manage a hill of Munro height, and for a chance to see dotterel.  My heart sank as we drew into the car park to find it already half full; with so many walkers ahead of us, there would probably be little chance of seeing anything. Going up through the plantations we saw or heard siskins, coal tits and wrens. This is probably a caterpillar of the oak eggar moth.


The cloud descended early on, and soon we had no views. Reaching the first top (An Cabar), we sat in the roughly-built shelter and ate our sandwiches. Two wheatears were running about in the seeding grasses, one at least of them a juvenile.


Then came the 2 kilometre-walk along the broad ridge, following the directions given on the sign.


It's all for a good cause. This is a very popular mountain, and the vegetation found here delicate and vulnerable. It's not only beautiful in its own right, it's also vital for dotterel. I think this is woolly hair moss, with the tiny white flowers and leaf-whorls of heath bedstraw.


As we reached the summit, the clouds rolled away as if by magic and we had views that stretched almost from coast to coast.


Behind Greger, the Cromarty Firth and the Moray Firth open into the North Sea. Okay, we couldn't actually see the coastline on the west side, but the misty hill on the skyline to the left is Beinn Mor Coigach - which rises from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.


We weren't intending to do the round walk this time but continued on for a short distance, hoping to see dotterel where we saw them in May last year, just above the col. But there was nothing, only a couple of meadow pipits. I looked longingly ahead, wishing I could walk and walk - both for the walking itself and to find dotterel - but these days we have to cut our coat according to our cloth, keeping the long descent in mind, and knowing when we should turn back.


We returned to the summit and had a coffee and a chocolate bar. A man came striding up very fast, touched the trig point pillar and said triumphantly "One hour forty-nine minutes!" He asked Greger to take his photo, and set off back down soon afterwards. Sorry we kept you.

Each to his or her own, I suppose. Personally, I can't spend long enough in these gorgeous places. This is a patch of dwarf willow, or - to my mind a nicer name - least willow. I didn't know it at the time, and it took me ages afterwards to pin down the species.


I naughtily left the path here to look out over the huge grassy corrie where ravens were tumbling (but I think that's okay as long as you don't actually follow the other path that I tiptoed across). The cloud lay very level all round, although here and there you could see a vaporous grey smear where it was raining.


We set off down, passing more people on their way up. Across the Bealach Mor is Little Wyvis, one of the Corbetts (hills 2,500 ft and higher but below 3,000 ft).


Going down was quite hard. The constructed path is great but some of the steps are pretty deep, and I had to turn sideways to avoid bending my knee unduly. Greger's feet were hurting. People who had been coming up as we started our descent had obviously got to the top and turned, and were now overtaking us with cheerful greetings. Back down by the stream, I spent some minutes snapping some tiny "fish" which turned out to be water weeds. Several oak eggar moth caterpillars were dead on the path, as was a golden-ringed dragonfly. I kept looking up hoping for a red kite as we sometimes spot them in the area when driving past, but all I could see was a trio of fledged dunnocks.


Greger went ahead while I dawdled along, until a blueberry plant stopped me in my tracks. I ate several blueberries - or blaeberries, or bilberries, depending on where you come from.


The walk was 16.5 km. Ben Wyvis is 1046 metres, but as the car park is located on the 150m contour, you do around 896m. However, according to Greger's new Garmin gadget, our total ascent was 1018m thanks to the extra walk down from the summit and back again. We were very tired, but we had done it. And if disappointed by the absence of more special birds, I was pleased to see the wheatears. They're always a welcome sight, and on this occasion they presented a new species for us on Ben Wyvis. Birds don't know it, but even the smallest can lift the spirits of us earthbound humans.

Between the sand-dunes and the road, a solitary golden plover foraged among the thistles and the sheep.


The chick on the pebbly beach was almost invisible from the cliff-top, but the anxious calling of a common sandpiper drew attention to its presence.


The ravens appear to be plotting something, but the sheep and her lamb don't seem bothered.


There was no sign this week of Arctic skuas, so I had to be content with a great skua flying across the headland from north to south. It progressed in a rather odd manner, with forward flight punctuated by sudden rearing halts that seemed too brief to be hovers. It had almost no tail, and I wondered if the regular midair pauses were a way of regaining its balance. Or it was catching insects. Or it was, indeed, just hovering to scan the ground below.


A small bunch of twite, a family party perhaps, skipped about among the gorse bushes. The white streaks in the picture are raindrops.



The rain was still falling when I spotted the black-throated diver on a road-side loch. I pulled as far into a passing place as I could get and snapped it over the top of the bracken.

As we sat in the heather ten feet apart, I remarked to Greger that people would think we'd had words.


In fact it was just that, in our old age, we have very specific requirements as to our seating arrangements for lunch - and we couldn't find two suitable places closer together. Greger likes a flat rock, otherwise he gets backache, while I need leverage to help me get up again afterwards.

We had walked up the Gleann na Sguaib both to get some hill-walking training without actually going up a hill, and because I'd had a panic attack about ring ouzels. It's some weeks since the Assynt wildlife site mentioned fledged ouzels near the Bone Caves, and I suddenly felt that the summer was slipping by so fast that they'd all be gone before we could see any. The nice couple we met in the Lael Forest Garden had mentioned climbing Beinn Dearg recently without seeing any ring ouzels, so we decided we would check the place out. After all, when you're Munro-bagging, you don't have time to look too carefully. We'd only seen them here (in 2010 and 2013) because they'd been right by the path. But by the time we'd finished lunch we were despondent. There was no sign of them.

A bright male stonechat was chasing two juveniles - presumably, not his. This is one of the fledglings.


I've checked back over the three walks we've done up to the tops here (plus one as far as the bealach) and found that we've never seen stonechats before.

We walked up a bit further and scanned the rough steep slopes beyond the gorge until our arms ached. And then, at the same moment, we both called out "There's one!" We lost it immediately but kept looking, and finally saw two - seemingly in some aggro with smaller birds (again, stonechats, we thought).


I could manage only a poor shot of one bird, but as the first spots of rain fell we set off down the path elated. Ring ouzels were still breeding in this lovely, rugged valley!

Waking up at 4 o'clock this morning, I looked out into the half-light before sunrise - and there at the edge of the lawn was a hedgehog !


Our neighbours told us they'd sometimes spotted them in their garden, so I've been on the watch ever since. This is the first live hedgehog I've seen in the UK - the only other one being in Sweden, many years ago.

It's been a rainy, windy day, and we stayed in and did odd jobs until late afternoon when Greger challenged me to a game of Scrabble. And what did the first seven tiles I pulled out of the bag include? Only needed an "I".


Talk about adding insult to injury!

The forecast wasn't promising, but we drove out to Achnahaird anyway - in bright sunshine. It was exhilarating to set off across the cliffs in such lovely weather, even before we saw two Arctic skuas chasing each other over the dunes.


The pale morph bird flew up very high and then disappeared unfortunately, but the dark one landed farther up the beach.


Walking back over the cliffs later, we were overtaken by the dark bird which treated us to a breathtaking display of aerobatics as it chased a skylark in a way reminiscent of a merlin. Both birds disappeared over the edge of the cliffs, and when the skua flew back into sight we assumed the skylark had escaped. The skua continued to hunt, flying low over the ground and out over the beach again, where we lost it.


There were a couple of heavy showers, but they eventually passed and the sun came out again. At Badentarbat, a sedge warbler was singing from the reedy pool; and a couple of juvenile wheatears were running about finding insects on the sheep-grazed turf.


A real baby wheatear was still being fed by parents at Old Dornie.


Driving back across the moorland, Greger pointed to a bird just taking off from the side of the road - and flying, oddly, along the road past us. When I got out of the car, the golden plover had landed again and was still in view.



The plover was picking about in the shorter grass at the edge of the road, but facing into the tussocky moorland now and then and calling; no doubt she had chicks hidden in there somewhere.

I thanked Greger for patiently driving me around, and he said that the art of driving birders is to be able to stop promptly and frequently when and where required, always keeping safety in mind. Blimey. Not that he's just a driver: at Badentarbat, as we ate our sandwiches, two waders went flying down the beach. He asked me what they were and I carelessly replied "Ringed plovers." "Really?" he said. "I thought one was rather dark." So I looked through the bins, and sure enough, one was a dunlin.

Oops.