Christine's walking & birds blog

Yesterday: Ever since I saw a photo of a Sabine's gull I've wanted to see one, and after a report of one in Ullapool on 21st by AW on highlandbirds.scot, I announced to Greger that this was a bird I was prepared to twitch - if it was still there. He said he'd join me and we walked our old lockdown walk through the village, round the point, and out onto the river spit. But we failed to spot it, although it was nice to see several kittiwakes there. However - looking at some pics that I took just shooting into the mob of gulls, I found one that might well have been the Sabine's (in fact, it definitely was!).

So this morning, while Greger went off to Inverness in his Tesla, I decided to try again. Making my way out to the river mouth, I spotted a "possible" flying past me down the loch and managed to see where it went down. I liked the way it landed on the very tip, aloof from the gully throng; was this the Sabine's? I was fairly sure it was.



I set off on the walk round to the golf-course spit, although I knew that I would probably not be able to see the gulls from there (well, not without flushing them all) as the tide was fully in and they would be hidden from view by the lie of the land. Arriving on the edge of the golf course, I noted ringed plovers and turnstones on the narrow beach and stopped in "the rough" so as not to disturb them. But I hadn't bargained on there being a knot present; this was much more wary, and after I'd clicked off a shot, it flew. I hope it went down somewhere close by.


I walked a little way towards Rhue, and when I returned a few gulls were on the water. Scanning them, I realised I'd got lucky as the Sabine's was there, in the company of a juvenile black-headed and a common gull.


The larger gulls took off one by one until only the Sabine's was left, so I should have been ready for it to do the same; but I could manage only one poor shot when it finally did.


However, it does show the lovely curve on the upper wing where grey meets white, and the shallowly forked tail - which I noted at the time but was unsure about, as I didn't know of this feature.

The gulls flew slowly down the loch and seemed to circle over a buoy; the Seascape Expeditions rib was out there (at least I think that's what it was), and this appeared to slow and stop - so perhaps they were also looking at the gull. The wind was now getting up and there were a few spots of rain, so I went home.

I gave up twitching many years ago, mainly because it didn't provide the same thrill as "finding my own"; and it's a long time since I've actually enjoyed a twitch. I enjoyed this one.

As a very high tide ebbed at Achnahaird, the first waders I saw were a dozen curlew - followed by a couple of redshanks.

Almost unseen behind a group of sheep, two black-tailed godwits and a ruff (one of at least two present) were feeding on the salt-marsh.


A wheeling flock of dunlin, sanderling, and ringed plover carried with it five turnstone, which went down onto a sandy ridge near the sea.


As I prepared to go, a small flock came flying in towards me and landed, making their way closer until I could see that there were three knot among them.



Back at the car park I visited the colony of mining bees, which was still active and with a new area freshly "mined". This small fly which was loitering nearby appears to be a Leucophora species - which parasitises mining bees by laying its eggs in their nest-holes (info from edphillipswildlife.com).


A reed bunting was snapped for the year in bracken at Badentarbat.


Pausing at the junction lay-by before driving home, I idly snapped a large bird on a distant fence post, assuming it was a buzzard. It was quite a surprise when I uploaded it back home - to see a peregrine falcon.


Which probably explains why the waders were so nervy today!

With recent clear nights to aid migration to the south, I didn't expect much to have dropped down at Achnahaird - and I didn't get much! A solitary sanderling landed nearby, giving me wary looks as it foraged; but it was still there when I walked away.


This seems to be a lion's mane jellyfish. There were several lying on the sand; and mindful of its reputed ability to sting even after death, I made no attempt to touch it.


A sparrowhawk cruised over the dunes and landed briefly on the fence for a record shot.


On the other side of the headland, I was scanning the sparkling sea for birds when I spotted dolphins, porpoising through the water between the mainland and the island of Tanera Mor.


Tanera Mor has been sold to someone wealthy who is doing huge works on it, to make it into an exclusive holiday destination for - well, more wealthy people. As well as boats going to and from the island, the area round the old jetty is now busy with workmen's cars and vans and the area is cordoned off as a construction site. The access to the cliffs is within that site and it seemed to be blocked off; however, they've left a pedestrian corridor leading to the jetty, so I walked out on that instead. The dolphins moved further into the sun and it was difficult to count them. There are eleven in the picture above, but there were certainly more.

Aware of a plaintive, unfamiliar whistling, I looked down to see an adult razorbill with a juvenile. Again, it's just a record shot - I seem to spend my life looking into the sun!


But I was pleased with the sighting - and the whistling, which I'd never heard before.

Back on the beach later, I was mortified when looking along the narrows between the mainland and the island to see a line of splashes receding - the dolphins had returned that way, and if I could have got up onto the cliffs I might have had closer views of them.

Pausing at the junction lay-by on the drive out, I snapped the hills across the salt-marsh - with Cul Mor draped in cloud.


Despite the traffic coming into the area, driving out was going smoothly until near the end. Approaching a left-hand bend I was confronted with a car very much on my side of the road. The still pics taken from my dash-cam don't convey how sudden this encounter was.



You would think that when approaching a right-hand blind bend, common sense (even self-preservation) would kick in and a driver would steer naturally into the passing place on the left. There was no apology from the woman - she stared at me as if I shouldn't be there, on my side of the road - so I shouted at her. It's the second time this has happened to me on this road since we came to live here; the first involved a man in an open-topped sports car, and he just managed to spot me in time and veer to his left - into the passing place that he should have been using in the first place.

A couple of years ago, we were returning from a hill walk in Braemar and driving along a single-track road near Tomintoul. A blue police sign warned of an accident just beyond the bend ahead, and Greger prepared to turn - but a policeman waved him on. As we went round the bend in the passing place, we saw two cars to our right, smashed together head-on, with the force of the crash making both cars rear upwards. Clearly the one going our way had ignored the passing place and hugged the rock face to the right - giving the car coming the other way no chance at all.

So there you go. Don't approach a blind bend on the wrong side; it's a single-track road - it hasn't suddenly become a one-way road.

We walked up Strath Vaich to climb the small hill of Meall Coire nan Laogh (666m) which we've previously got up from Loch Glascarnoch - so the walk-in from Black Bridge along the private road was new ground for us. Our hill is the one in line with the house. Along the road we saw stonechats, meadow pipits, a wheatear, a chaffinch, a house sparrow - and a distant kestrel.


We couldn't find the old ATV track but came upon a more recently constructed track that had a horribly muddy section up through the woods.


However, higher up it was drier and did make ascent of the fairly steep hillside easier. Looking back, we were quite shocked by the low water level in Loch Vaich - although it has been fairly dry recently. This is an artificial loch created for the purposes of hydro-electric power, and it was strange to see that on its exposed bed, the course of the river still survives.


It was a very warm day and we found it quite hard going. Our starting point was lower than the Loch Glascarnoch lay-by, and the estate road doesn't ascend much; so the climb up the hill itself is a longer one. A bulldozed track means you don't have to struggle through long grass and heather, but on the other hand it tends to go straight up the hill - there are no gentle zig-zags. As we neared the convex crown of the hill, we left this track as it seemed to traverse the slope below the summit and even dip down again. This last part of the climb was vegetated and boggy for a while, then the rocky, tundra-like ground took over which was a relief - but it was still blooming steep. Greger said he felt as though he'd "hit the wall" as marathon runners are prone to do, and asked me to take a photo of him on the summit as soon as we arrived to remind himself later how tired he'd been!


Two giant tachinid flies were buzzing around, nectaring on heather and landing frequently on the cairn. This was a new species for my hillwalking list.


After lunch I studied the plantlife while Greger lay down and had a short rest. There was bearberry with its oblate fruits, but I think this patch of hill-top vegetation shows Arctic (or Alpine) bearberry. The picture also shows crowberry and reindeer moss.


I'm fairly sure this is Alpine clubmoss (ebps.org.uk - the British Pteridological Society).


A couple of walkers (who'd probably been all along the ridge to Am Faochagach, lucky things) coming towards us from Tom Ban turned off to their left and disappeared. We'd already decided not to trek across to Tom Ban, but now I suggested going a little way towards it and picking up the ATV track, which is what I assumed they'd done. We set off in that direction, and after a few minutes I spotted movement ahead among the rocks. Golden plover - unbelievably, my first of the year! All six birds are in this photo, with two hunkered down behind rocks with just an eye showing.


After a while they stood up again and started to preen, and to forage for insects. We continued slowly on our way and they made their way past us and up the slope we'd just come down. The two outside birds here have remnants of breeding plumage so I assume the group was parents with four young.



Unfortunately we were always looking into the sun - but this was a lovely sighting which made reaching the top worthwhile. The only other birds we saw on the summit were a lone raven checking us out and a solitary meadow pipit.

We soon picked up the old ATV track which was much nicer than the new track - it's sometimes so faint you can hardly see it, and lots of the pressed-down vegetation is springing back. Soon we could see the new track below us - a wide, brown slash across the hill-side - and eventually the ATV track converged with it.


Descending to the tree-line, I saw a female common hawker dance across the track and land on a birch trunk - but I needed bins to locate it against the flaking white bark. The yellow costa was burnished to gold by the sun, linking back to the beautiful golden spangled plumage of the plovers.

As we began the walk-out, I diverted across a hummocky grassy area to look back and get a photo of the dam, which appears to be turfed. The hill beyond is Carn Gorm-loch (910m) which is easily high enough to qualify as a Corbett (in fact, it's only a few metres lower than Munro height) - except that the col between it and the Munro Am Faochagach isn't quite deep enough (info found on the walk-highlands website). This is a pity, as it appears a more imposing and shapely hill than its neighbour (not in picture).


Not that it matters much - this is a hill too far for us now. Our walk today was 15 kilometres with a modest height to gain. It was enough.      

Apart from three dunlin flying past at Badentarbat on a grey morning with a cool wind, birds were conspicuous by their absence; but tiny creatures provided some interest.

After snapping what I thought was a large fly on the sand at Achnahaird, I was surprised later to find that it was a sea slater - also known as a littoral woodlouse.


Back at the car park, I walked on towards the rocky cove where I've seen possible water shrew - although I was unlucky with that today. But a loud buzzing drew me to a moorland bank where bees were busy around many holes mined into the crumbly earth on two levels.




Given the attention the bees were giving to the heather, it seems reasonable to suppose these are heather colletes bees (C. succinctus) and this is an "aggregation" of nests (info from bwars.com).

As I drove away, the sun came out at last - so I parked by the plantation and walked through fragrant bog myrtle to the edge of the loch. A few black darter dragonflies were around; this is a female.


An all-black male was seen briefly but it was wary; an immature male was more obliging.


A furry hoverfly was only my second Volucella bombylans (plumata) - a bumblebee mimic. The separated eyes indicate that this is a female.


Birds seem thin on the ground (and in the air) at the moment, so I'm glad to have found an interest in other forms of wildlife. The hoverfly is fairly widespread and common but I'd never seen one until I came to Scotland. The heather colletes bee is also widespread; however, these apparently nest singly or in small numbers in southern England, which might explain why I've never noticed them before. It's mostly in northern England and Scotland that they nest in large aggregations (bwars.com).

We drove north to Scourie, walking out to the point to watch for skuas. Low cloud lay along the top of Handa Island, and there was a cold wind blowing across our headland as we picnicked in the heather.


It was nice to be there again, although we recalled that on our one visit last year, we didn't manage to see any Arctic skuas.

Once again, the only skuas we could see were Bonxies; but eventually, an Arctic chasing a kittiwake came fairly close in before giving up and flying swiftly back towards the island.


Bonxies flew over our headland and sometimes landed on cairns. One, with an air of "Who you looking at?!" about it, stood its ground as we passed below - before taking off lazily as though its departure had nothing to do with us.

.....while in the tangle of undergrowth out the back were a male and a juvenile blackcap. Siskins have also made their first appearance here since winter, feeding on tiny cones in the cypress tree.

The car park at Achnahaird was full, so I decided to give the beach a miss, parked above the chalet, and then walked up onto Cnoc Mor. From the hill-top I could see some splashing far out in Enard Bay (of which Achnahaird Bay is just a small inlet), and I made my way down across boggy ground to the cliff-tops to get a better view of what I thought were probably common dolphins.



The headland on the left is Cluas Deas.


The lighthouse at Cluas Deas is also known as Stoer Lighthouse; in the foreground are more dolphins.


When I got back home, I learnt from the assyntwildlife website that 100+ common dolphins had been recorded off the Bay of Stoer - so I was lucky enough to see some of that activity, albeit at a huge distance, and I now also had confirmation of my tentative ID.

I wonder what it is about distance, that brings a certain (I was going to say melancholy, but that's too passive) restlessness, or yearning; maybe it's just the wish to be somewhere else. I was first aware of it many years ago on Beinn Dearg, a hill in Torridon. The previous day we'd been up Beinn Alligin because it's a Munro, and now we climbed this one despite its loss of Munro status because we wanted to - as good a reason as any for going up a hill! But on the summit, I looked out to sea and along the coast, and saw a settlement with what looked like a yellow arc - a sandy beach? Distance lent romance to the idea; I was very happy to have just climbed a hill and be enjoying the solitude, but at the same time I suddenly longed to be in a seaside town, amid the holiday bustle. Torn in two.

Today, it was the dolphins themselves who caused my melancholy - their unreachableness, and the sense of loss as they headed back out towards the open sea.

Wandering back to the road preoccupied with such profound thoughts, I completely missed a white-tailed sea eagle catching me up and passing me - and could only grab a useless record shot as it dwindled into a speck somewhere beyond the beach.


On the road into Coigach in the morning, a lorry had gone too close to the edge in a passing place and was perched, leaning precariously, over the bank; and now as I began the journey home, a driver meeting me at a passing place stopped and informed me that recovery of the lorry was underway, so there could be a holdup. I thanked him but carried on anyway, pulling in at the cattle grid from where I took a photo across Loch Osgaig. On the right can be seen the queue of traffic building up from the opposite direction; and before long, quite a few cars and campers had passed me and were filling up the road ahead.


After about forty minutes the truck was righted and driven off, and the traffic all started moving again. This is a single-track road, and I'd guess that as many people were driving into the area as leaving it, so it all became a bit of a mess. Back on the main road, I didn't even try to park at Ardmair, as the long lay-by was full of campervans. Some have been overnighting there; presumably, when the adjacent campsite is full. I think some regulation of campervan hire companies is needed; it's madness to have so many vehicles coming into areas where there just isn't room for them all.  

A "mermaid's purse" was found wedged in a pool at low tide a little way up the Ullapool River.


It was about 7 centimetres long, and from research I've done online it appears to be the egg sac of a lesser spotted dogfish (Scyliorhinus canicula) also known as small spotted catshark. The curled tendrils at one end are for attaching the sac to seaweeds or rocks. This sac is torn on both sides, and there's no knowing whether the baby shark actually thrived and emerged successfully or not.

Yesterday we crossed the country to Cromarty. The osprey was at Udale Bay; to the right are some redshanks (foreground) and some Sandwich terns (background). The cow doesn't seem bothered. Everything was very distant!


Looking out the back one morning a few days ago with bleary sinusitis eyes, I saw something orange fluttering about among the buddleia flowers. I grabbed the camera but couldn't manage to get a picture in focus before the insect disappeared. (The window was also bleary!)


The orange wings suggested hummingbird hawkmoth, but it didn't seem large enough. What bodywork can be made out looks more like narrow-winged bee hawkmoth (assyntwildlife has a picture of one) but I'll never know for sure.

Which reminds me:  Back in July 2014, Greger spotted some bees mating in the dunes at Achnahaird, and I identified them as northern colletes (Colletes floralis). But the assyntwildlife site has photos of another species of this genus (Colletes succinctus) and now I'm not so sure. The two species look very much alike, so I won't feel too bad if I've got this wrong; but according to other websites the northern colletes is more likely to be found on the Western Isles than on the mainland of Scotland - although the habitat (sandy dunes and machair) was just right.