Wednesday, September 06, 2017
Yesterday: Men working in a garden along the road to Rhue had stopped what they were doing and were shading their eyes as they gazed skywards; I glanced up through the windscreen and there just ahead of me was a sea eagle. I raced on to the car park and grabbed a shot as it circled high above before heading off across the loch towards Beinn Ghobhlach.
It appears to have a pale yellow bill, and the tail is predominantly white apart from the central feathers, while there may be a hint of pale axillaries; the head might have been lighter in colour than the body but not markedly so. The bird is maybe not quite fully adult, but what Dick Forsman in his raptor book calls "fourth plumage-type" - 4th calendar year (autumn). I'm not sure of this though.
Today we went hunting hen harriers - lazily, from the car, as the wind was quite cold. We saw several buzzards; then a raptor cruising along a ridge caught our eye - and surprised us by being an osprey.
The osprey disappeared off to the north - towards Loch Awe and Loch Assynt; but there were no harriers.
// posted by Christine @ 2:59 PM 
