Christine's walking & birds blog

The back-yard this morning:


Greger went out with an enormous snow-shovel and cleared not only our driveway but our next-door neighbour's too. The road north from Ullapool up to Ledmore Junction has been closed since yesterday morning, with fresh falls of snow and drifting causing problems. I settled for a walk round the village. A couple of white-wingers were around the harbour; although I think this might be a Viking gull (glaucous x herring gull).


While this is probably an Iceland gull.



Dragging myself away, I walked round the point and onto the camp-site. Walking was difficult here in fairly deep snow, and I was thankful that I'd put on an old pair of après-ski boots of Greger's (now too small for him). As I rested by a fence, a skylark flew onto the snow a little way off and then ran towards me to investigate a patch of grass that was just showing.



The skylark seemed to grasp the blades of grass in its bill and slide along them until finding something on them - tiny insects or larvae perhaps. 

Further along, I was looking back at a row of trees when a small bird flew up into one of them. I couldn't quite make it out - and before I could get a picture, a second small bird chased it and then landed on a stalk, where I snapped a hasty pic of what was probably a stonechat.

And then my birdwatching was interrupted and my walk spoilt by the approach of two women with two small dogs - the latter intent on me from the moment they spotted me and then running, barking furiously, towards me. One wore a muzzle, and I recognised it from a couple of days ago when we encountered it on the same walk. Greger told it to shut up on that occasion, and although the woman said "Sorry" in passing, it was in that infuriating way some dog owners have, as if you're going to smile and be in on the joke - sort of "Oh, isn't he a naughty boy!" - while having no intention whatsoever of correcting the blooming thing.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I went out of my way to avoid the dogs while they persisted in barking and growling round my ankles until the woman grudgingly walked over and herded them away - and I learned the important fact that the muzzled dog was a Romanian rescue dog.

WTF?!  What's a Romanian rescue dog when it's at home? Haven't we got enough blooming dogs in this country already, without going and rescuing them from abroad?

An eagle flew over - right into the sun. Eventually I picked it up again high over the ridge on the far side of the loch. 


In the end I missed out the spit and the river path and cut my walk short, taking the ramp up to the road instead. Following the road round, I saw the woman and her two dogs below, still on the spit, talking to a couple of men with a mob of border collies. No-one spoilt her walk.

I made my way home with murder in my heart.