Christine's walking & birds blog

I drove round the single-track roads hoping to see snipe. Years ago when we walked the Rubha Coigeach headland, I wrote of snipe shooting up from the verges; but there was nothing today. Two birds running ahead on the road turned out to be golden plover; I had to wait in a passing place anyway so clicked off a shot from the car.


Also on the road was a juvenile wheatear.


Half a dozen dunlin were with ringed plovers on the cliffs.


Two terns were on rocks at Achnahaird; common presumably, although the one on the left seems to have put the wrong legs on.


Other birds seen: willow warblers singing in several places, sand martins swooping round an old overgrown loch-side house, a reed bunting, and a stonechat. Only one cuckoo was heard - I reckon their numbers are down this year.

It's ten thirty and a beautiful evening - still fairly light, and with a nearly-full moon high in the southern sky. I wish I had the energy to go out looking for roding woodcocks. I wish...I wish.....And tomorrow is voting day - in the weirdest, scariest general election I can remember. I don't think there'll be celebrating in this house, no matter who gets in. Everything's depressing.