Friday, April 14, 2017
Another depressingly cold day with showers of rain to heap on the misery. A short drive north gave me a willow warbler just inside Keanchulish Estate - not my first of the year as we heard and then had a glimpse of one in Longart Forest a few days ago. But this one sang more strongly and I had better views.
Still further north, a small green field with grazing sheep and a steep mossy bank behind held half a dozen meadow pipits, two pied wagtails, a mistle thrush collecting moss for nest-building, a male stonechat, and two wheatears.
Near Loch Craggie, there were tadpoles of varying sizes in the ditch and a few newts - including a newt tadpole, with external gills. I wrongly called this an eft in a previous post; but an eft is the juvenile newt in its next, terrestrial phase.
// posted by Christine @ 3:38 PM 
