Thursday, July 18, 2019
We spent most of Tuesday at a cold, windy Stoer, hoping for whales and seeing nothing. Yesterday there was a report of a minke whale breaching 10 times off Clachtoll Bay - so today we headed for Clachtoll. We sat on the cliffs for ages and then gave up, walking on towards the broch and the beach; Greger pointed out something flying over - four Arctic skuas which I completely fluffed getting a picture of. I snapped one of several common gulls on the beach instead, and we began to walk back.
As we neared the top of the cliffs again we saw a large splash out near the Coastguard vessel Ievoli Black - which was stationary for a lot of the time, so probably doing some kind of research work. Anyway, if they were looking in the right direction, they must have had a great view because the first breach (or at least the first we saw) was closer to the ship than this one - which I only managed to get the end of as the splash subsided.
Maybe this was the minke whale that has been reported recently on the assyntwildlife site; anyway, it was our first sighting of a whale! It appeared to be moving to the left (south-east) but after the third or fourth breach (we can't recall how many) we saw it no more.
// posted by Christine @ 12:24 PM 
