Christine's walking & birds blog

Our target was the two hills in the centre, which I first visited last June.


An unseen cuckoo called in the distance, and a willow warbler was singing from the conifers. House martins were back, nesting again on the dam. Along the track were meadow pipits, skylarks, a stonechat carrying food, and three quarrelling wheatears.


Our struggles began after we left the stoney track, plodding up rough ground through pine and birch saplings with lots of holes to trip us up. Above the deer fence it was slightly drier than my last walk here - but it was still pretty wet! There were lots of dwarf birches (Betula nana) - so tiny there was a risk of stepping on them.


A red grouse was flushed from long grass. This frog hopped out of our way, and a second one was seen swimming in one of the many peaty pools.


A plover went over, flying swiftly in the direction of Ben Wyvis. There was no time to grab bins or camera, but I had an impression of dark underparts; maybe it was more likely to be a golden plover than the longed-for dotterel. A mountain hare, pointed out by Greger soon afterwards, was some compensation for missing a pic of the bird.



A wheatear was on the first top (Meall Coire nan Laogh).....


.....where a huge cairn must be the work of the landowner rather than hillwalkers, I think.


After lunch we continued along the broad ridge. We spotted a lizard, and located lots of tiny cloudberry plants, growing mostly on disturbed ground where an ATV track had flattened/obliterated the vegetation.


Just as I was having my own picture taken at the second top (Tom Ban Mor), I caught sight of a white-winged bird flying across the hillside below, where we'd just walked. Greger said there were two, and tried to point out where they'd landed. But just as I got onto them they flew back round the hillside - they had to be ptarmigan (we saw at least two ptarmigan a couple of kilometres further north-west when walking up Am Faochagach in May 2018 - this is part of the same ridge).

Back on the first top of the day, I wandered around a bit still hoping against hope for a dotterel. Greger recorded my futile search with his mobile, looking north to Tollomuick Forest.


Several wheatears on the way down could have been the same ones we'd seen in the morning, at the side of the loch; so I'll say three wheatears, although it might have been more. By the time we got down to the track again I was limping - but I cheered up at the sight of sundew plants beginning to emerge in the ditch.


And because I stopped and was busy snapping the sundews, I couldn't hear what Greger was shouting back to me, although the fact he was pointing wildly with his pole into the sky suggested he was trying to draw my attention to a flying bird. Belatedly I got onto a diver, which had flown more or less over him.


As the swiftly-flying diver disappeared over the ridge, I just had time for a couple of very distant shots; I think it was probably a red-throated diver.

Back at the dam, sand martins and swallows were among the house martins; and a common gull flew past. There were four or five ravens; the two on the wall appear to be juveniles, although the less-than-perfect landing skills of the airborne bird suggest that it, too, is a youngster. And goodness knows what the meadow pipit's doing in the midst of them.


The only other birds for the day were hooded crow, buzzard, and two drake mallards on Loch Glascarnoch. We were very tired thanks to the difficult, spongy, pathless walking on the lower part of the hill. The walk was 8.5 miles, and although he admitted it was wonderful on the tops, Greger said that if I want to go up there again I can blooming-well go on my own!