Christine's walking & birds blog

I haven't felt well for a while, so I'm staying in. The garden birds are as entertaining as ever. The siskin is one of half a dozen (mixed sexes) visiting the feeders.


Just one brambling has been seen today, vying with the chaffinches to catch any morsel that falls from above.


I'm also looking through old photos, and I found this one of the war memorial in Burnham. There's no ghost standing beside it - just someone I've faded out for courtesy's sake.


There is a smaller war memorial now, which stands just inside Burnham Park; the old one was located where today, you go into The Precincts and St. Peter's Close. The building in the background is my old infant school - long gone - and the gate to the churchyard can just be seen on the right. The hedge marks the boundary of a lovely big "rec" - only one small corner of which was taken up with the usual swings, slide, roundabout, see-saw, and rocking horse while the rest of it was a huge grassy field where our primary school (at the end of Church Street, and also no more) held its sports day. Even now, the smell of new-mown grass takes me straight back to the rec of my childhood. Much of it has been taken up by housing developments and a new school.

Googling, I found a better picture among Francis Frith's collection, with St. Peter's Church in the background. Memories, memories....

A beautiful day drew us over to the east coast. At Udale Bay the rising tide brought hundreds of waders and ducks close in to the lay-by. Among the wigeon was one which looked a little different, with a whiter "blaze" - and I wondered if it was the American wigeon that has been reported here several times. But it was still a long way out, and not easy to see well in the glare. We hadn't seen it before, so watched with interest as it approached.


It came right in to the farther grassy spit which was still above water - and promptly vanished!


Several times the waders went up and zoomed around in tight but fluid huddles - the culprit being a sparrowhawk. I was quite pleased when it flew off along the shoreline, as there was a pair of stonechats in the field with the rams.


After a while the birds all went up again, and this time even the gulls deigned to lift off the water.  It was a buzzard, swooping in rather like a peregrine but then levelling off and disappearing harmlessly in the distance.

A couple of redshanks were feeding along the shoreline at North Kessock in a brisk wind and very bright sunshine.


A sparrowhawk cruised over, and a grey wagtail was on the slipway.


Tonight at home, I thought I heard a tawny owl hoot; but when I opened the door I heard nothing more, and the cold glitter of the faraway stars depressed me, so I quickly closed it.

Cnoc Bad a' Choille

To use the stile you have to cross the ditch, clamber up the bank, climb the stile, get down back down the bank, and cross the ditch again. Greger simply opened the gate instead (having noticed that it had no padlock), and we followed a frosty track through the silent plantation - not quite birdless, as we saw two coal tits and a blackbird and heard at least one wren.


However, the landowners had the last laugh as the next gate was firmly padlocked, giving us the choice of retreating or climbing over.


We continued to follow the track, aware that the open hillside we wanted was just beyond the trees - and finally we found a gap which we used to gain a steep, grass-and-heather slope. Just as we reached the end of the plantation, there was a frantic flapping of wings - and then nothing.


It was probably just as well that it was very cold, because much of the bog on the hill had turned to ice; you had to watch your step, but this was preferable to sinking into mud up to your ankles.

Having struggled up the very steep slope and reached the ridge, we just had a walk to the right of a hundred metres or so to stand on the lower top. The hill to the left of Greger has a trig point (Meall an Fhuarain), so it could be a future outing.


There were sweeping views to the west and north, with (from left to right) Cul Mor, Suilven, Canisp, Conival, and Ben More Assynt on the skyline. Against all the "rules" of landscape photography, it was difficult to avoid our own shadows, and anyway, I quite like them. Shows we were there!


It was now a case of turning back again to walk the one and a half kilometres along the broad ridge to gain the higher top - with another inelegant climb, this time over the deer fence itself.


In what was predominantly soft, boggy terrain, it was nice to see a small outcrop of quartz, set off by the frost and the grey-green moss.


After a gentle but long climb we could at last see the trig point on Cnoc Bad a' Choille.


Looking east:


Again, the top plate was intact on this trig point, although the lettering was worn in exactly the same place as the previous one we bagged - at the start of the word "triangulation". Odd. The FB number was S7929.


We walked away from the trig point to look down the hill and across the sweep of country to the south-west - although any pictures in this direction were useless because of the extremely bright sun; and as we stood gazing at Seana Bhraigh and An Teallach, Greger exclaimed "Bird!" A dark shape went hurtling arrow-straight from left to right below us and a good distance away. It wasn't hanging about. It had places to go and people to see, and it covered the boggy moorland at an enviable speed, finally banking round a distant rise of land and so vanishing from our sight. I did ineffectual things with the camera and cursed my clumsiness, so I have no record of what we thought was a black grouse.

As we made our way down from the top to make a round walk of it, a second bird materialised in the sky flying in the same direction as the first one. It was going so fast we could only stand and stare and try to recall afterwards what we'd seen, which was a darkish bird with white on the wings. This seems to confirm black rather than red grouse, but I'm not sure.

An icy wind had been increasing in strength all day, but now we really needed to sit down and have something to eat and drink. We headed down to the strip of grass between the edge of a plantation and a large cleared area - and found a lovely little corner that made us both instantly think "old Caledonian pine forest". It was quite different from the dark, almost lifeless commercial plantings. We sat on the bank in the sun and gratefully sipped hot coffee; and it was only after we'd left the spot that I wondered if "they" would see it too, and preserve it.


We made our way across the muddy track made by the forestry vehicles but found it frozen enough not to be too messy; and so gained the quite substantial road that's been built up the hillside for the timber trucks. The place was deserted now, the machines standing idle - which is why we chose a Sunday for our walk.


The logging road took us down to the main road, and we had a walk back of three or four hundred metres to the car. A nervy bunch of deer in an open area melted into the forest, but looked rather like roe deer. It had, we agreed, been an enjoyable day. The hill is only 340m high, but with the long walk-in and the roughness underfoot, it was a good outing for exercise, the views were wide-ranging, and our first sightings of what might have been black grouse in flight had been the icing on the cake. (Later: I want to follow up these sightings to confirm, although the black grouse hen I snapped in a silver birch last November shows they are to be found in the area.)

Beyond the feeders, where the lawn was dappled with sun and shade, a blackcap prepared to defend half an apple - but the chaffinch wasn't interested anyway.


A few days ago I took some pictures of a raven in trees against a snowy hillside, with the vague feeling that they reminded me of something. It came to me today: The Hunters in the Snow (1565) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder - often seen on Christmas cards. (Actually, it's always depressed the hell out of me for some reason, but never mind - it's still a masterpiece.) Later: The birds here are probably not ravens but crows and a magpie (borne out by a wikipedia entry) - perhaps lifelike enough to disprove my original suggestion that they were stylized representations. Interesting, though, is a quote from C

äcilia Bischoff, that "the combination of Alpine mountains with Flemish architecture renders pointless any search for reality". (artsandculture.google)

The buzzard was listening intently to the call of a second, unseen bird and took little notice of either me or a raven, which made a loud flapping noise with its wings as it flew over, perhaps in defiance at the presence of the raptor.


It only lifted off when the unseen caller materialised from behind the stand of pine trees, and the two sky-danced for a while. A third buzzard glided in, and gradually they all melted away into the distance, leaving the raven to patrol the ridges where maybe it already has a nest.

The small hill of Cnoc Chaornaidh (285m) was climbed in 40 minutes from the road, total walk distance being 2.1km with an elevation of 133m.

Splashing through bog up the hillside between the forest and a sheepfield, I heard a flapping of wings and looked round to get the merest glimpse of a brown bird flying away above the trees; I thought woodcock, I thought hen black grouse - but it happened so quickly and I saw next to nothing, so I don't know. Bit high for a woodcock that's just taken off, maybe; and this wasn't a million miles from where I saw a black grouse last year.

It remained dry but dullish and there were good views north to Breabag and Ben More Assynt, although the mountains were ill-defined against a watery blue sky and scarves of cloud. Loch Ailsh, which we'd walked out to a week ago ago hoping to do this hill from the track, is just visible on the right of the picture.


There was a splendid pillar, with a complete top plate - Greger pointed out that the screws looked new, so perhaps this one is loved and looked after by someone. The lettering's a bit worn in places, but simply states: Ordnance Survey Triangulation Station. The FB number is S8148.



Not so far below, the River Oykel winds its way south-east towards the Dornoch Firth.


Apart from the unidentified bird flushed low down on the hill, nothing else was seen on the walk. But back on the road, a moorland pool held some life - half a dozen water crickets skimming about.



And when we drove on to eat lunch in the Loch Craggie lay-by, a buzzard was spotted on the top of a conifer and then a distant raven, standing out well against a snowy hillside.



The raven looked as though it was feeding in the alder trees, a bit like a black grouse; but perhaps it was collecting twigs or bark for nest-building. A dipper and a male goldeneye were on Loch Borralan. We drove home content with our short walk - it had been quite long enough on this cold day (4ºC).

At least 30 barnacle geese were grazing on fields in Achiltibuie this afternoon.


The tussocky grass probably gave them some shelter from the cold wind.

My first ringed plovers of the year were on the beach at Achnahaird. I can't get to like rings on birds, no matter how much I tell myself it's all in a good cause.


A fishing boat close in at Badentarbat and a gathering of gulls were probably exploiting a shoal of fish; and watching them, we had the usual fleeting views of several porpoises.