Christine's walking & birds blog

Late afternoon, a brambling appeared under the feeders. Several had been reported in the village way back at the start of the autumn, but this is the first I've seen since last winter.


A hasty through-the-window shot on a very gusty day when the birds were constantly being spooked up into the trees was all I could manage before the light went and they all gradually melted away.

On this cold day with a speckling of snow on the tops, four Canada geese were with eleven whooper swans, a handful of mallards, and a pair of wigeon at the north-west end of Loch Glascarnoch. They're the first Canada geese I've seen here.

A black grouse was seen from the road, performing acrobatics in order to reach the male (?) catkins.


A large brown bird, almost certainly a buzzard, glided through the scene; I tried to follow it, and when I looked back at the tree the grouse had disappeared. Before I drove away I saw at least two blackcocks with one greyhen feeding in another silver birch further up the hill.

There was ice on the puddles and frost in the grass early this morning on the track up through the plantations. A solitary fieldfare ran ahead of us along the ground and then flew reluctantly up into a pine. The low sun flooding a tawny landscape with golden light seemed to set the world on fire.


We left the plantation and the sunshine below us, climbing steep wet slopes in cold shadow and inadvertently flushing two red grouse. A growing arc of light on the skyline above us promised a return to the relative warmth of the sun; but though welcome, the brightness made that direction useless for birding. A small flock of silhouetted birds rose from the ground above and flew off; a desperate shot snapped when they were miles away suggests they were snow buntings.


This plant at least stayed still, and was later identified tentatively as Alpine clubmoss.


Climbing this Corbett for the second time was another bid to see a ptarmigan in its winter plumage, as we'd seen a pair here (not in winter plumage) on our first visit in April 2016. We reached the summit just as another couple arrived from the north-east. They headed for the shelter, while we walked on along the ridge and sat in the open for lunch, looking along Loch Glascarnoch to Ben Wyvis.


We decided against walking further along our own ridge, which still looked suitable for ptarmigan - but I scanned the area carefully and could see no movement on the ground at all. While doing that I caught sight in the bins of a distant eagle being hectored by a raven, but the two were moving west into the sun and I lost them.




Droppings - possibly ptarmigan - suggested their recent presence, but we failed to see a single bird.



A ptarmigan sighting would have completed a nice tidy trio of grouse species for the day; but even without one we'd enjoyed a great outing - and just when we'd accepted that our hill-walking for the year was probably over.

Suddenly the wide area of grass and mire between plantations was full of airborne black grouse. There was no time to zoom, and I just clicked into the scene as grouse shot off in three different directions against the backdrop of Beinn Liath Mhor Fannaich.


Cropping the picture, I was surprised to see I'd caught four blackcock as they flew away; two on the extreme left, two on the extreme right.


They didn't go far, and now and again I could hear them calling to one another as I made my way up the track. There were probably seven birds at least, and one greyhen was sitting some way down the slope in an alder tree.


Where I stopped for lunch, a scattering of dark feathers suggested that something is preying on the grouse. A buzzard floated past at one point, looking as though he knew a thing or two but wasn't telling.

I made a mistake in a previous post (Oct 11); I said the small group seen on that occasion might be a family party. As I read on the website forestry.gov.uk this evening - "male black grouse are polygamous and play no part in rearing young". I should have known that! I've also learnt the male goes into eclipse plumage after breeding (The Birds of the Western Palearctic). I certainly didn't know that - thought that was only for ducks.

It was a cold, brightish day, but for once I wasn't sorry not to be going higher into the hills. It was very wet underfoot everywhere and now and then clouds obscured the tops. I heard what sounded like a crossbill; it probably flew straight over as there didn't seem to be any cones on these conifers, most of which are immature trees.

A single meadow pipit took off in a panic and a goldcrest was heard. Down on Loch Glascarnoch, whooper swans were - well, whooping, I suppose. And then I heard something else in the distance, something that was definitely waderish, something that was familiar - and yet I couldn't place it. It began to rain, and I gave up for the day.

A walk at Loch Craggie hoping for snipey creatures in wet ditches brought nothing. On the way home I stopped along the road to snap a pair of stonechats, and found that I'd inadvertently selected continuous shooting; this seems useful on the face of it, but leaves you with three times the usual number of images to work through - and most of them having to be deleted.


(Greger sometimes has a mild grumble about the thousands of photos building up on his desk-top, and I then have a mammoth deleting session - only to top the numbers up again after a few days.)

Two waxwings have now become three, and they're sitting in the wind-swayed top of the cypress in our garden.



They seem to be finding tiny berries on the rowan tree out the back that the winter thrushes maybe couldn't reach. Earlier, two waxwings flew down from a treetop perch when a roving sparrowhawk crossed the sky.

A small camper-van was in the car park, so someone was probably on the way up into the mountains; but they were clearly long gone, and I had the plantations to myself.

Close to the fork in the track, a woodcock was flushed; it flew up the hill-side and over the ridge before I could do anything with the camera. I walked almost to the lower footbridge, and watched the tops disappear into cloud. Somewhere up that valley is where we saw the short-eared owl in July; but that's probably also long gone - and the only bird I could see today was a buzzard.


It was quite cold, and some of the water on the track was iced over; but there was little wind and it was pleasant to be out. If I wasn't up in the hills at least I had them all round me. I turned and walked back; quite far down there was a flapping of wings - and two grouse took off from the heather and flew towards the conifers. The bank was high just there and hid them from me almost immediately, but I think they were black grouse rather than red.

Driving home, I pulled into a lay-by above Loch Broom and looked across the road to see a - what? Buzzard? I got the bins onto it and no! It was a juvenile golden eagle.


Eventually it vanished over the ridge.


This was a closer encounter than the one a couple of days ago; although I suppose it could be the same bird.