Christine's walking & birds blog

About a week ago, the trampled ground and prints in the snow showed that deer had been visiting this molasses (?) block.


A line of tracks looking like a file of flying geese suggested that black grouse are also making use of it - but we failed to see any on our walk up to the stream.


So it was a relief today to see at least nine black grouse from the weather station lay-by. They were feeding in trees and sometimes flying between branches.


We decided against walking up through the plantations; we'd already had one walk at the dam and it seemed a shame to disturb these intently-feeding birds, especially as it was -3˚C. They were at least 300m away but the males were fairly easy to pick out even amongst the conifers, while the females stood out better against snow.

The branch the male is on below wasn't originally at that angle; a female tried to join him on it, but the branch dipped and they both nearly fell off. After much struggling to keep her balance the female gave up and tried another tree!


There were at least a dozen whooper swans still on Loch Glascarnoch, but we saw no small birds. The road had been cleared and gritted; but the Dirrie Mor does have snow-gates, at Braemore Junction and by the Aultguish Inn. It would clearly take more snow than this - and possibly blizzard conditions - to close them (I think it last happened in 2010).

Back home, we went into the bedroom to change - and I spotted a white bird flying across from the direction of the harbour. My mind raced - white winger? No, wings too rounded. Little egret then? But it was a barn owl; it flapped off to the north, looking rather odd above the roofs and chimneys. Hope it's finding food during this cold spell.