Christine's walking & birds blog

Greger decided to spend the morning on his Spanish, in preparation for the online lesson later today that the teacher has organised for his evening class; so I went for my constitutional alone.

The dipper was a welcome sight (my first of the year), standing on a rock in the middle of the Ullapool River.


Yesterday, when we rounded the point into West Shore Street, I remarked to Greger that I've seen wheatears here in past years. We weren't lucky - but today, oh joy of joys, there was a wheatear!



I'm aware of how lucky I am to be living here at the moment. It's not such a hardship to miss out on hill-walks and moorland walks when I can see gorgeous birds right here in the village.

This is the seventh day of lockdown, and it would have been the seventh day we haven't been near Tesco or any other shop. We'd made a list and planned to go tomorrow. But Greger, going out for a short walk after I'd got back home, went round by Tesco to see if they were carrying out the distancing measures they've been talking about. They were, and it looked quite quiet, so he went in and bought a few items. It was so nice to have a newspaper again!  Doing without for a while certainly makes you appreciate the small things that we take so much for granted.

We went out for our walk mid-morning. It was eery to begin with as the streets were quiet and empty - but after a while a couple and then a woman alone passed us going the other way, all greeting us cheerfully and stepping out into the road to keep their distance.

At the bottom of the steps there were two people with a mob of dogs, but they went into the field, and we had the river spit to ourselves apart from a man who passed us as we were leaving.

I didn't take bins but I did have my camera, and I used that to zoom in and identify two black guillemots in summer plumage far out on the still water. As we walked along the edge of the camp-site next to the beach, a familiar call rang out and a greenshank went flying low towards the river mouth.


I grabbed a couple of poor shots, the greenshank being noteworthy as it was my first for the year and only my fourth sighting here - the first being a single on April 15 2015, then two birds on April 20, and one on April 6 2016 (no pic).

The ferry was leaving for Stornoway but I resisted the urge to take a photo as it would make us look like tourists! Turning onto the broad grassy strip on West Shore Street we returned the wave of a couple sitting outside their house in the sun - and then we began to see a few more people and one or two cars. The newsagents and Boots the Chemist on Shore Street were open, but when I asked Greger if we should get a Guardian he said he'd be happy to do without a newspaper again rather than go into a shop.

Back at home, honey bees were seen on the flowering currant bushes and a bumblebee landed on a daisy before flying a bit unsteadily up onto the windowsill. It was only when I uploaded the picture that I saw it had already been targeted by mites (or ticks?).


I'm not sure if it's an early or a buff-tailed bumblebee. The garden thermometer says it's 9.3℃ - wow, balmy days!

We're not on lockdown yet, so we drove to Loch Glascarnoch. The lay-by was empty, and we walked across the dam and a short way along the track and back again without meeting anyone else.

A bird on a distant boulder provided my first picture of the year of a meadow pipit.


It flew off up the hill as we approached, and above it, we spotted two stonechats perching in birch saplings. Greger alerted me to what sounded like a low trill; we could see nothing at first, and after wondering what it could be, I suggested frogs. Further on we saw frogspawn - but it didn't look healthy.


The trouble is that the ditch is drying out, so the top part of the spawn is probably not viable. Even if the eggs survive, the tadpoles have to hatch out into water; it looks as though this was a waste of time and effort. We saw more of this crumpled spawn and then some that looked healthy, in a deeper part of the ditch; but more rain is needed for it to stand a chance.

Ravens are once again nesting above the face of the dam.

We stopped for a short walk on the drive home and I spotted some coltsfoot among the ivy; Greger, who was ahead, actually came back to take a look. He's not usually interested in plants, but this is one of Sweden's first wildflowers of spring, and is known there by its scientific name of tusillago.


As we drove into Ullapool, a large plume of smoke rose from the north of the village. When I went out again for a walk round the spit, I could see the extent of the fire.


Fires are horrible, but also mesmerising. As I watched (along with several others who were keeping a distance from each other) flames suddenly shot up high above the conifers.


After all the rain that fell in February, you wouldn't think it would be dry enough for a fire to take hold in such a way - but it was also being fanned by a terrific wind which, further out on the spit, nearly took my legs from under me. This wind also caused the Stornoway ferry to cancel its second sailing of the day.

High on the slope, firemen were battling the fire with a hose they'd dragged up there while others appeared to be trying to beat out the flames.


A familiar call reminded me that I'd come here to look for birds, and a scan of the exposed rocks and seaweed revealed a redshank.


I didn't try to get closer because I didn't want to drive the wader back up into those awful winds, so I took what shelter I could behind a gorse bush and took a record shot while the camera and I were buffeted hither and thither. Not the most exciting bird, but, like the humble coltsfoot, another small and uplifting sign of the impending spring in these uncertain and depressing times.    

A visit to the Coigach area on a lovely day (but still cold) brought few birds - a little grebe at Old Dornie being a first for the year.

On the way out I took a look in the curious, squarish little moorland pools right by the road that have held both frogspawn and toadspawn in past years; I'm not sure how these pools formed and it may be that they are manmade, and something to do either with drainage of the road, or with nearby peat diggings.

Today the wind was ruffling the surface of the water which was already murky; I could see no spawn and it was only in the last pool that I spotted two toads, crawling over submerged rocks.


And then I saw something I've never seen before in these pools - a newt! It glided out from the shelter of the weeds and there was a sudden skirmish and a roiling of the water; I didn't see exactly what happened, but it seemed that one of the toads had had a go at the newt. Perhaps it was just objecting to the presence of another creature in its spawning place, or maybe it "knows" that the newt is there to feed on its tadpoles. Or perhaps it was just trying to catch it to eat, as toads apparently eat anything that moves!

Where the ditch widens and deepens into a couple of pools, I counted at least 70 frogs.


In the shady, murky pool opposite there were at least ten more; and further along the track, where a black plastic pipe served as a culvert, there were at least another ten. This time, I heard them singing - I suppose it must be a series of croaks, but it was difficult to hear and impossible to record above the noise of the wind, and sounded to me like a sort of gruff purring. Quite pleasant to listen to.

Although there was some welcome sunshine, the wind was very cold, and I wasn't tempted to a long walk. The only birds I saw were four whooper swans on Loch Craggie and three pairs of stonechats on fenceposts along the road.

I'm lucky that I can drive out to several places and get some fresh air and exercise without encountering crowds - today, I didn't see another soul. Earlier, I decided to be a bit more positive in my shopping efforts and was at Tesco half-an-hour after they opened. This paid off, as they still had half-a-dozen small packs of loo-rolls on the shelves, and about a dozen jumbo-sized kitchen rolls. I took one of each. But they were clean out of hand-sanitizing gel (and have been since the start of the panic) and clean out of tissues, so I hope we don't get colds!

We'd planned to put the bungalow on the market in May, but coronavirus will probably scupper that. Oh well. At least if we're still here in the summer I'll be able to look for a northern emerald dragonfly - the glimpse I had last August (not to mention the poor picture I got) was not enough.

Sitting in the car eating lunch at Badentarbat, we watched half-a-dozen ringed plover fly low over the sea and the stony beach to land on the sheep-cropped grass strip where we were parked. There was a bit of half-hearted displaying, then they split up and began to forage, the one closest to us tapping the ground with a foot and then plunging its bill into the thin soil to find some kind of insect larvae.


And, apart from 25 skylarks fairly new in at Achnahaird, that was about it!

A visit to Loch Craggie yesterday brought no frogs - and no frogspawn! Birds were scarce in a bitingly cold wind, and the best sighting was of thirteen whooper swans on Loch Borralan. By the time we reached Ardmair on the way back, a hailstorm was sweeping in off the sea, so we gave up and came home.

Today began with some brightness, and I drove to West Terrace. A large flock of geese on the camp-site made me pull over and scan for anything different, and there was one pink-foot among the greylag.


It was two days after the highest supermoon tide and about an hour after high tide this morning; but still about the widest I've ever seen the Ullapool River where it curves out to meet the sea loch - although this is looking upstream.


The sound of honking alerted me to the flock of geese relocating, and they went down on the water where I was able to count 80 birds - 79 greylag, and one pink-foot.


I wonder if the camp-site owner chased them off his grass! It began to rain and sleet so once again I gave up and came home, and it's now snowing.

There was a report of frogspawn in Assynt on 1st March; so today I went hunting along the usual ditch near Loch Craggie.

The first thing I noticed was a lot of what I thought were tiny rocks sticking up out of the water - they turned out to be frogs!


Fortunately I spotted them in time to snap a picture along the ditch through twigs and reeds. But when I went closer they disappeared. There were at least 25 here; and a small pool on the other side of the forestry road held at least nine more. The next time I visit, there should be frogspawn!

Birds however were hard to come by; it was irritatingly windy although relatively mild, and there was one prolonged shower of rain. The rather wistful song of an unseen mistle thrush was nice to hear, a crossbill and a wren were both heard but not seen, and an oystercatcher was back on its breeding territory.

We walked from home, down the road to the loch-side, up through the Braes of Ullapool, and through the plantations near the mast. There was no sign or sound of any crossbills.

As we made our way across the high moorland a large raptor came flying towards us from the sea. It looked pretty big, and we thought white-tailed sea eagle at first, but I think it's a golden eagle. It seemed to have a full crop, and several of the pictures show it with an open bill and tongue showing.


The eagle was moving deceptively fast (that's my excuse anyway!) and was a bit too close to focus on with the full zoom.  It flew further into the Rhidorroch Estate and we lost it.

The warm sunny weather also disappeared, and by the time we had made our way down the steep, muddy path of Ullapool Hill and were passing through the gate onto the road, the rain had set in once more. A good walk though!

What a beautiful day! Blue skies and sunshine, and a coldish wind that reminded you not to get too uppity yet!

I heard the snow buntings before I saw them as I made my way across the Loch Glascarnoch dam behind some other people. There seemed to be seven buntings, and they were once again on the steeply sloping outer wall of the dam; but I think they flew there from the grassy slope, having been disturbed by us walkers. Taking refuge on the face of the dam, they either sat still or pecked about in the clumps of moss.






Looking back at the lovely hills beyond Loch Glascarnoch, with the loch just visible to the right.....


....but, although I enjoyed my walk, I saw no black grouse.

Meanwhile, at home, Greger had been indulging in some bird photography of his own. He'd glanced casually out of the back window to see if anything was visiting the bird feeder, and was startled to see a female pheasant on the wall. It looked so big! 


She had disappeared by the time I got back. I scooped tea-towels from the washing machine and hung them on the line in the sun - and an hour later, I had to run out to bring them back in again as it had started to rain! Back to normal.