Christine's walking & birds blog

This was supposed to be a day of celebration - we could legitimately drive more than 5 miles for exercise! I didn't start it well, finding my sixth tick of the year (on my foot!) when I showered. I stayed at home yesterday, so this must have come from the garden. Note to selves - shut the garden gate at night. Of course, deer can jump over - but they might not bother if the gate is closed. Anyway, we drove up the Dirrie More and parked in the rain, our rucksacks all packed for a hill-walk. But thick cloud was down over the tops, and the rain continued....We called it off, and went for a short walk during which we flushed a male black grouse. He flew off low and unhurriedly, not going far but dropping down out of sight. Near the car park, a wheatear was spotted flying along the river - a welcome sight, as we haven't seen one since the early days of lockdown.

Our next short walk was at the dam. I think this might be a marsh fragrant-orchid, but I don't insist on it. I think I'll give up my new-found interest in orchids - too many of them are a minefield to ID, and just to make things even worse, some of them apparently hybridise.


The ditch also held the usual sundews, both common (round-leaved) and great.


These goldenish pods are, I think, spore capsules, rising on red stems from common hair moss (probably).


My thoughts went back to pre-lockdown: there were no ravens now at the nest site and the snow buntings have long departed to their breeding grounds in the uplands; but there were a few nice things to see. House martins have returned to the dam for the summer and were wheeling constantly, with one or two swallows and sand martins among them. Meadow pipits and this rather damp stonechat have clearly bred successfully.....


.....as has the common sandpiper - only the second time I've seen this species on the loch.


A bird came flying swiftly over, quite high, and was either a merganser or goosander, though I felt it had the slighter build of the former. But still no eagles. We enjoyed a bottle of Spumante when we got home, although the day hadn't quite gone the way we hoped. (The Ben Wyvis car park, to our surprise, held half a dozen cars, so some hill-walkers had been braver than us!) Looking back over my blog, I realise that in each of the previous six springs we've spent here, we'd already seen ptarmigan by now. Got some catching-up to do!