Tuesday, April 11, 2017
With rain forecast for the whole day on the west coast we went east, where we found the American wigeon still at Udale Bay. This bird is slightly troublesome for me, being a semi-twitch - but it is nonetheless a handsome duck.
It swam between a male and female wigeon and then tried to chase the male away. Do I hear the patter of tiny hybrid feet?
Spotting a Sandwich tern flying along the edge of the water, I tried to get Greger onto it but lost it; he, however, calmly pointed out that there were several of them standing on a small island - which was rapidly shrinking as the tide came in. They were flighty and quarrelsome and three of them had flown off before I could manage a shot.
This was just after I'd tried to make a female mallard into a pintail and one of hundreds of pink-footed geese into a bean goose; later, I would spot two purple sandpipers - only to realise as they stood up that they were redshanks, hunkered down out of the wind! A pair of yellowhammers were in the rams' field. At least I got them right.
We drove on to Cromarty where the sea was rough and exciting, and our first guillemots and kittiwake (juvenile) of the year were seen. Several long-tailed ducks were fairly close in.
Two flew past us and landed even closer; but I'd just clicked off a couple of shots when a high-speed RIB full of orange-waterproofed tourists came zooming round the point and put them to flight again. This was one of those trips that take you to look at the wildlife. Hmmm.
Greger spotted fins out in the middle of the firth and I caught one of the animals by chance. It appears to have a blunt snout; I think it's a harbour porpoise.
Some hirundine without tail streamers were spotted above a field where we couldn't pull off the road, so I don't know whether they were house or sand martins. And when we arrived back in Ullapool, it was still raining.
// posted by Christine @ 12:48 PM 
