Christine's walking & birds blog

The world has come to the Highlands - most of it in camper vans! Hill-walkers are everywhere; the car park for Beinn Dearg was packed, as was the lay-by on the Destitution Road that serves the Fannichs. The car park for the beach at Gruinard had one or two spaces but we decided to push on to Aultbea. As we pulled into the car park, I was just noting that the only birds I could see on the sports field were pied wagtails when Greger said "What's that?" and pointed to a tallish bird on the far side of the field. When I looked through my bins I was pleasantly surprised to see a black-tailed godwit.

A dog walker came briefly into the field, and the godwit moved a little nearer to the sea. But it didn't fly; and when we drove away it had returned to its foraging.

The public toilets in Aultbea are still closed - so we headed back. (There are no other loos between Aultbea and Ullapool.) However, we stopped at the high viewpoint above Gruinard Bay in a bid to see black-throated divers - and soon I spotted six adults far below.


At Aultbea we'd spotted a red-throated diver, and a bit further on from Gruinard we saw two great northern divers.