Christine's walking & birds blog

Slavonian grebes aren't looking quite their best at the moment, with orange plumes a bit straggly as breeding plumage comes through. These were two of at least six on Little Loch Broom.


A further 11 or 13 were at Little Gruinard.


Also at Gruinard were a pair of black-throated divers, several great northerns, two greenshanks, and a pair of goosanders.


Four more greenshanks were at Poolewe beach; and at least 70 barnacle geese were on fields at Mungasdale.

It might have been a beautiful day had it not been for a strong, wintry wind from the east. The salt-marsh at Achnahaird held at least twenty lapwings and three golden plovers. Walking across the cliffs, I found about twenty skylarks creeping over the short turf, with smaller numbers of meadow pipits.



And a male and female were at Badentarbat.



Add in over 100 barnacle geese at Achiltibuie, a small flock of redwings, a solitary shelduck on the salt-marsh, a pair of whooper swans on Loch Raa, several bright stonechats, and a female goldeneye on Loch a' Mheallain - and it wasn't a bad day's birding.

Meall an Fhuarain

At just 578m, this hill was never going to be a serious expedition - or was it? Setting off up the forestry track, we scanned Loch Craggie for a female goldeneye we'd seen from the road. It would have been a first for the mountain list, but it had disappeared; so instead we admired the view over the loch of Breabag, Conival, and Ben More Assynt.


Once again, we'd chosen a Sunday for our walk in order to avoid logging operations, although we passed a couple of vans belonging to two men who were planting out conifers. Just after that, we struck off up the hillside; with the recent removal of so many trees, at least we could see where we were going. But underfoot it was very rough (wet and spongy, very uneven, and covered in cut branches). Our destination is the hill with snow on it; and I was already falling behind.


We had noticed another car parking near ours as we climbed past the forestry workers - and it was around here that we caught sight of the other walker, who was striding along the edge of the plantation ahead - how had he passed us?! When we reached the trees we realised that the going was easier here, and did a bit of striding of our own.

Meadow pipits were in display flight everywhere, and we watched two skylarks rise above us singing. At about 300m, a lizard went careering through the heather.


Not long after that, we flushed two red grouse, which flew off with their nice, rather quizzical croak. Bit too fast for me and my camera.


We toiled on. The day had become quite warm, and the sun was shining from a deep blue sky. We both took off our jackets, and I stuffed my woolly hat in my pocket. This was fatal as it later fell out - and as we took a different route back, it lies somewhere up there among the peat hags still, in a place I have no intention of returning to!

Greger has problems with his feet, and they were now beginning to hurt. My problems were general ill-health and lack of fitness. I fell further and further behind as I plodded up the convex slope of this boggy, grassy hill with false summits galore bringing disappointment and extra whinging. Then I looked up to see Greger on the skyline waving his arms in triumph. Relieved, I pushed on and on, and came to a sharp piece of rock sticking out of the ground - and no Greger. Had he seen this and assumed it was the trig point? (Yes, he had.) On and on it went, and even when I had the summit in sight, the ground between seemed to stretch out like a vast, impossible distance that I would never be able to cover.


We had seen the other walker leave the top and pass us at a distance on his way down - it seems he followed a vehicle track all the way which was wet and muddy but still offered better walking than the pathless stuff we'd traversed. Just as well he'd gone, as we sort of took over the summit (Greger's coffee cup is standing on the top of the trig point). I usually like to look around, but today all I could do at first was sit down and have something to eat and drink.


Refreshed, I walked round the plateau and snapped off shots in all directions, but the pictures were a bit disappointing given the amazing views. Greger said it was a panorama of some of our hill-walking history - and certainly we could lay claim to having stood on top of many of the ones we could see.


The triangulation pillar was a bit battered and mossy, but had its top-plate intact; and the flush bracket number was S7932.


Once we had packed away our clutter, I took a last snap westwards towards the sea....


....and we set off down, determined to follow in the other walker's footsteps and stick to the tracks - even if they made it a longer walk. In fact, across a couple of snow patches, we were quite literally walking in his footsteps.


This was taken just after I suffered cramp of the inner thigh - so agonising it made me cry out. Poor Greger came rushing over, but when I managed to gasp out that it was cramp, he said "Thank goodness - I thought it was your knee." "Yes, thanks Greger, meanwhile I'm in terrific pain." But I know what he meant; cramp does eventually go away. And this did go away - only for me to have it in the other leg ten minutes later.

Having splashed through a thousand bogs, it was with great relief that we reached the forestry road. Every step was agony now for Greger with his painful feet, but he was watchful enough to spot the remaining birds of the walk; a buzzard, and several bullfinches.


It was good to get back down to the car (the other walker was long gone) but I was depressed by my lack of stamina on the walk and my immense weariness now it was over. Greger pointed out that it had been a fairly long walk with difficult conditions underfoot; in fact the walk was almost ten miles, and we had been out for nearly 8 hours. I love to be in the high, lonely places but it's getting increasingly difficult to reach them. Apparently, Queen Victoria went up Lochnagar on a pony. Now there's a thought.

Walking back to the car park at Achnahaird, I spotted a stoat as it slipped into a gully in the cliffs and we spent a little time looking for it; I looked up to see a sea eagle flying purposefully westwards.



Although it was a brighter day today there were still spatters of rain and an icy wind. A rock pipit was singing in display flight on the edge of the cliffs, and two razorbills, two great northern divers, and a pair of mergansers were in the bay. At the back of the beach, a lone shelduck was on the river; and four lapwings were on the machair - hopefully two pairs back on territory.  Stopping to inspect moorland pools, I saw some frogspawn and a toad in the water; and two skylarks in the heather were almost certainly a pair. Two pairs of stonechats were on fence-posts, and a male and female goldeneye were on a freshwater loch.

How dreary it's been today! Lacking even the drama of yesterday with its high winds, bursts of hail, and clap of thunder, today has been just grey and wet and dull. So I carried on looking through my holiday snaps - and found some more I'd forgotten.

Before the man at the hotel told me that a hoopoe often came down into the hotel grounds to feed, we had already seen one near the lagoon on our first full day. We'd sat down to rest on a bench in the shade - and a bird flew onto a post on the opposite side of the dead-end road. "Hoopoe!" I whispered, and clicked off a couple of shots before it flew.


There were quite a few ringed plovers at the end of the lagoon, but on the far side were a couple of more delicate-looking plovers; a really cute chick was running about between them like a clockwork toy, but I'm not sure this can be theirs as they're not in full breeding plumage.



The pictures are hugely cropped, but I think they show female and male Kentish plovers.

A kestrel flew in and perched below us on our trip to the capital, Las Palmas.


One more of the scrounging whimbrel - I don't suppose I'll ever get this close to one again.


I read on someone else's blog (can't remember whose) the observation that birds we're used to seeing in Britain as summer visitors are often fairly approachable on their wintering grounds. I would just add to that - especially if you're eating ice-cream!

The Ullapool River spit was a breezy, rainy place to walk out on mid-morning and the tide was still quite high, but it got me closer to the action than yesterday. A mixed flock of turnstones and ringed plovers flew in as the water receded, and a curlew called unseen. A white-winger on the end of the golf-course spit almost certainly wasn't an Iceland, but whether it was a glaucous or a hybrid (herring/glaucous), I'm not sure. It looks like a glaucous to me, but now I know about hybrids I'll have to read up on them.


At the moment, I'm concentrating on a family of warblers I saw on Gran Canaria - which I'd forgotten about until I was going through and deleting holiday pics yesterday. These, I think, are two of the young.


I thought of whitethroats at the time, but they didn't seem quite right - they appeared to be more slightly built, and wasn't the tail too dark? Researching now, I learn that while female and juvenile whitethroats have brown heads, spectacled warblers have grey. These, and an adult bird that flew in and fed them, had grey heads. I'm not sure whitethroats even breed on the Canary Islands - whereas spectacled warblers are quite common and should be breeding about now. I'd better go back to make sure :o)

The white balls in the newt puddle up the quarry road are possibly snail eggs - but again, it's a work in progress. More research needed in all areas!

In very strong winds at Ardmair an Iceland gull was with herring and common gulls, dip-feeding along the edge of the waves.


Back in Ullapool we parked on West Terrace and got out to look down at the river spit; but the wind was freezing cold and also made it impossible to hold the bins and camera still, so we soon got back in the car. Four probable Iceland gulls were present, three of which were washing and preening and being carried downstream by the river; after drifting for a while they would lift off and fly back upstream and start all over again. Eventually I was able to get a record shot of all four.




It seemed unlikely that the Iceland gull we'd been watching at Ardmair had flown to the river in the short time we'd taken to drive back - so it's possible there were five white-wingers in the area today.

Today felt almost spring-like - and sure enough there was some sign of life on our walk up the quarry road. In the top left of the first picture is our first frogspawn of the year, and in the bottom right, its predator.



There were at least two newts - and some more eggs. At least I presume they were eggs - but I haven't been able to identify them.


This was all in a dusty puddle by a gate into the quarry - a little-used gate as far as I know. But Scotland is full of water, so why do they have to choose this unpromising (and temporary) pool?

Greger was determined to whisk us away to the sun before the end of the northern winter, and sure enough "whisk" was the word as, with a tail-wind and a half-empty aircraft (not to mention a female pilot!), we left Glasgow on time and landed on Gran Canaria just four hours later, twenty minutes earlier than scheduled. After a coach ride down the west coast, we checked in to our very nice room and were soon out on the promenade overlooking the sea, with sanderlings, ringed plovers, grey plovers, and little egrets all on the rocks below.

The following day we walked to the lagoon where, despite the crowd-pleasing parakeets, we preferred a close encounter with a greenshank.



Feral pigeons were another draw for undiscerning tourists, who threw them leftovers from their ice-creams. I was startled to see a whimbrel amongst the scroungers, stalking determinedly towards a pigeon which had picked up an empty cone. I didn't see it happen, but presumably the whimbrel relieved the pigeon of the cone.....



The whimbrel sidled down the cliff out of sight; but when it reappeared, a tell-tale bulge in its throat suggested that it had swallowed the cone whole.


A singing Sardinian warbler was spotted on waste ground.



A flock of small, bright birds flew up from scratchy bushes and perched for a while in the open. Didn't help, though, as I hadn't a clue what they were! I did have reservations, thinking they had the hallmarks of possible cage-bird escapes. Subsequent research indicates that they were common waxbills.



"Birds of the Western Palearctic" warns of two similar species which are escaped cage birds; but our birds have neither the distinctive black tails of the black-rumped waxbill, nor the black bills of the crimson-rumped waxbill. So these are probably not escapes, but are possibly introduced birds.

In the dunes, just before a strong wind blew up filling the air with sand and leading to our hasty retreat, a shrike was spotted near the path ahead.



The shrike was singing a rather squeaky song, but all at once this changed to a "chek!" alarm-call; and we looked up to see a kestrel cruising overhead. We walked on, but the shrike flew past us and landed on some low bushes - when we realised there was a second bird present. Perhaps they were nesting there.
(Later: I first thought this was a southern grey shrike - Canaries race (Lanius meridionalis koenigi) but I'm not sure now. There is also a desert grey shrike. I think I'll just leave it as a grey shrike! 

A bird that I would like to have seen better was the Canaries race blue tit - Parus caeruleus teneriffae.
I got my first glimpse in one of the palm trees in the grounds of the hotel, alerted by a song I didn't recognise. (Later: Again, I'm not sure. It could be the N. African race ultramarinus.) 


I saw a second bird on a visit to the capital, Las Palmas, but it was similarly active and wary, and soon disappeared (possibly because breeding).


Spanish sparrows were also to be found in the hotel grounds, and were anyone's for a scrap of food. They frequently flew into the one of the restaurants and helped themselves to sweetcorn and dessert.


Another guest at the hotel, seeing me watching birds, told me that a hoopoe sometimes flew in to feed on the lawns. I assumed he meant early in the morning, but one day when we were lying in the sun by the pool, a hoopoe came swooping over low and landed near the path.


After creeping towards it with my camera, using palm trees as cover, I realised that people's feet were appearing in the frame and that, in fact, one couple had stopped and were looking down at the bird. I felt such a fool, that I retreated - but I got another chance on a walk later, when a hoopoe suddenly appeared on a low wall. Rather than try a close shot, though, I took Greger and the bird together.


The Canary chiffchaff was everywhere, and less wary than the ones we'd encountered on Tenerife.


Tenerife is known to be a relatively bird-poor island, so the varied bird life on Gran Canaria was a pleasant surprise. On both islands, though, Berthelot's pipit is supposed to be common, so by the last day I was fretting that I hadn't seen one on either island. And then a pale, leggy bird on waste ground looked promising. (I say "waste ground", but this open, dusty area with scrubby bushes - so alluring to a birder - is probably going to be developed.)


        
Looking at all the pictures I could find, I wasn't sure it was a Berthelot's pipit to begin with, and kept getting hung up on Richard's pipit, as its legginess and long hind claw seemed more indicative of that species.

We used all the pools, but specially liked this one, right by our room; like the others, it was a straightforward, rectangular pool that you could swim in - just a little less busy than the main pool area.