Christine's walking & birds blog

Yesterday I took a walk along a forestry track, where I saw my first cuckoo of the year.


At least one tree pipit had also arrived.


And several bright male stonechats were seen in the clear-fell areas, hopefully with unseen mates sitting on eggs.

Today it was very cold despite sunny spells, with an icy wind from the north; I took only a short walk and birded mostly from the car. During a stop by the bridge over the River Kanaird on the A835 (in hopes of a sedge warbler) I heard the intermittent and sometimes elusive sound of reeling. The noise from passing traffic (including a high-performance car of some kind which was certainly not keeping to the speed limit!) made it extra difficult to locate the source of the song; but a movement on the bank below, closer to me than I'd bargained for, resolved through my bins into a grasshopper warbler creeping through the weeds.


I clicked off two optimistic shots, and was amazed to find the bird actually in one of them!