Christine's walking & birds blog

The reluctant northern spring might just be on the way. We walked up the quarry road to the accompaniment of uninterrupted willow warbler song; we lost count after twenty individual singers. Greger stopped suddenly and said "Was that a cuckoo?" From high on the hill beyond the upper quarry the bird cuckooed distantly again - and was silent. As we approached the sheep fields at the end of Loch Achall, a tree pipit was flying up in display and singing as he parachuted down to birches and alders.


We sat on the grassy bank to eat lunch and watched two wheatears, a male and female, hunting along the fence. A sand martin went careering over.

Coming back over the hill we failed to see or even hear the cuckoo again, and the focus of interest was the large but shallow puddle where, once again, newts were courting.


This puddle straddles the path, so you'd think the newts would be at risk - not so much from walkers, who tend to skirt it - but from the odd mountain biker who would probably splash through without a second thought. Also - what if it dries out? This male showed the webbed back feet and tail-end filament of a palmate newt.


The females, which tended to be darker, were also larger than the males, being swollen with eggs.


Making our way down through the blazing yellow gorse towards the village, we heard and then saw a chiffchaff, almost shouting his song as though to be heard above the willow warblers. And the last thing we heard as we passed through the gate onto the road was a blackcap, singing unseen behind the houses.