Friday, October 21, 2016
No Jack snipe was flushed from the salt-marsh at Clachan today. A dipper was feeding at the edge of the rising tide.
I drove to the quarry road and took the path up Ullapool Hill, where a stonechat was one of very few birds around.
On the other hand, the sky might have been full of things; I was concentrating so much on seeing a Jack snipe, I hardly looked up. That's why a distant, silvery trilling, audible for several minutes, took some time to penetrate my skull. I stopped, looked down at a rowan tree on the edge of the higher quarry, and saw a lone waxwing. It flew off, still calling, then circled round and flew over me very high on a straight line towards the village.
Back in the village I checked the rowans along the river path and then drove to West Terrace. In the tangle of undergrowth on the bank below, a chiffchaff was hunting insects.
But I didn't see the waxwing again.
// posted by Christine @ 12:51 PM 
