Christine's walking & birds blog

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.