Saturday, May 30, 2020
My car has stood still for 9 weeks, and I haven't driven for ten. We're now allowed to visit friends and relations from different households (social distancing always observed and car journeys limited to 5 miles); but I don't have any people to meet up with. My friends are wild places and wild things, so as Greger was washing the cars and needed to juggle them anyway, I decided to drive to Ardmair (3 miles away) and see what happened.
Nothing much happened, as it happened. The car started first time and I sped, unimpeded, north from the village with a sense of elation. There were a few people on the beach at Ardmair - a family sitting together, and a solitary woman sunbathing. I got out - and almost immediately heard the calls of dunlin. There were two at the edge of the waves, and I sat down on a boulder to watch them.
Yesterday: The quarry road was hot and dusty, and we saw our first fritillary of the year - a small pearl-bordered. It was nectaring on birdsfoot trefoil. We continued on from the bridge to the tip of the loch, where we heard the chipper call of a snipe and caught a glimpse of a common sandpiper. Not our finest birding hour.
// posted by Christine @ 8:47 AM 
