Christine's walking & birds blog

After a night of strong winds it was a relief to wake up to a calm day of blue sky and sunshine, and we decided on the Ullapool Hill route for our walk. It was only about 3℃ when we set out, and the path was icy in many places - so the going was slow.

We stopped for a breather somewhere above the upper quarry, and scanning the ridge to the north with the bins I spotted what I thought might just be a bird-shaped rock, sticking up against the snowy backdrop of Cul Mor. But it turned out to be an eagle. I think it's a golden eagle, although at that distance I couldn't be sure (Greger's just measured it on the map and the eagle was 1.4 kilometres away).

The only other birds seen on/from the hill were a buzzard and a blue tit, although there was a flock of tits and siskins at the bottom of the quarry road - where, on our last walk, we saw a treecreeper.

At home there was a small tragedy in the garden - a female siskin with feathers so fluffed up she looked bloated, and sitting on the ground below the feeders with her head tucked back. I looked on the RSPB site and learnt that it could be either salmonella or trichomonosis. Either way, the bird will die. We've moved our feeders around on the lawn and I've kept them reasonably clean, but maybe not enough. We'll stop feeding for a while, and I don't think I'll bother with the Big Garden Birdwatch count this year. 

On a very cold walk (just below freezing) round the usual haunts, I heard the eerie, wavering call ("tremolo" I think) of a distant great northern diver. Some shags were showing breeding tufts, and a male merganser was also looking quite dressy.

Back home, I was reading a list of people who have died in Scotland from Covid on the BBC News website - with a photo of each one and a paragraph or two about their lives and families - when I saw that one man had a daughter called Senga; an unusual name, but it isn't the first time I've heard it. When we moved here, we met one of our neighbours who was introduced to us as Senga - and I must have looked as though I'd seen a ghost. Because that wasn't the first time I'd heard the name, either.

Long ago, in our Buckinghamshire village, there was a girl called Senga. I always understood that when her parents were trying to decide what to call her, they looked at the name Agnes and then realised that if you reversed the letters, they made a prettier name. And as, over the years, I didn't encounter it again until we came here, I assumed it was unique.

The name seems to have been in favour for a while in Scotland - and the girl in our village had a Scottish mother, so that's probably the connection.

We walked up Ullapool Hill and into snowy realms, following the path out to Loch Achall. Just upstream from the bridge a dipper was fishing.

That and a raven were the only birds we saw. Yesterday on a village walk, two reed buntings were seen briefly at the end of West Shore Street but they flew off over the camp-site; and a birder we met on the edge of the golf course told us she'd just seen a white-tailed eagle fly over the loch.

A brisk walk on a cold day brought one new bird for the year - a kittiwake. It was on the far side of the loch and constantly on the move.

Three days of rain ended with a leak in our porch ceiling, from the valley in the roof above. We had a leak from the valley on the other side of the bungalow a couple of years ago, so Greger knew who to phone.

It's probably thanks to a heavy fall of snow on the east coast that the roofer and his mate were available to drive over this morning (our snow's all gone) and do an emergency repair job, hoping this will hold until spring.

I took a walk along the camp-site and round to the golf-course. The tide was far out, and for the first time I made my way across the broad stony spit to the edge of the water in order to get a bit closer to two common scoter.

I still wasn't very close, and I couldn't sit down anywhere to steady the camera - plus I was looking into the sun. Enough excuses. Otherwise, it was just the usual suspects - or at least, some of them.

There was a fresh fall of snow overnight, and the emergence of the sun this morning tempted us out. The temperature hovered around freezing, but fortunately there was no wind.

It was coming up to high tide. Walking through the camp-site we counted the oystercatchers dozing at the water's edge (twenty or twenty-one - we made it different each time!) and I pointed out a handful of ringed plovers and turnstones. But it was Greger who spotted the purple sandpiper.....

.....which was eagle-eyed of him as it wasn't standing against the water at the time but was "hidden" among the boulders. It's my first purple sandpiper in Ullapool. The female stonechat was still along West Shore Street, hunting today in the seaweed from her railing perch at the back of the beach.

A cold and sometimes icy walk across a deserted golf course ended on the beach. Scanning the sea brought nothing but shags, Eider ducks, and a distant great northern diver; but further round in the mouth of the river, was my first merganser of the year. Something else was diving near it - a male goldeneye.

But I was looking into the sun. By the time I'd made my way round to the other side, the goldeneye was in the company of eight goosanders - seven males and a female.

We had intended to go up the hill on the left, but even here the path was quite icy and we decided to leave the hill for another day, following the path round to the Braes of Ullapool instead.

The painted soldier had been placed on a small knoll overlooking the village and the loch.

The snow on our drystone wall gives it a furry look. I googled it, and apparently it's surface hoar; it forms after cold, clear nights on banks or layers of snow, and is something to do with radiation of energy from the snow and the presence of liquid.

Our walk today was short - just under 6 kilometres - but it involved a steepish climb and felt an important step for me. It was the first walk I've done - apart from village and loch-side strolls and two level walks at the dam - since turning seventy in December. With relief, I realised that I can still do it! 

We had to cut short our village walk this morning - but not before spotting this stonechat at the end of West Shore Street.

Greger had just received a call from the heating engineer informing us that he could come and look at our boiler this afternoon. (We lost central heating and hot water on New Year's Eve, and have spent a miserable couple of days and nights moving electric radiators and fires from room to room and having old-fashioned washes at the basin filled from the kettle instead of nice hot showers.)

The snow began to thaw yesterday but it froze overnight, so that the paths were very slippery this morning and it was best to walk on the road. As there was very little traffic this was no problem; and to begin with, there were no other walkers either.

A great northern diver was on Loch Broom, just off the camp-site point.

In fact, the diver had been further out - but when I stopped to look through the bins, it began to move towards me.

I'd gone out as I usually do on January 1st to start a year list - but, as often happens, I was so beguiled by one particular bird that I probably missed out on other "ticks". Down south it was the lesser spotted woodpeckers in Burnham Beeches - an early one would keep me rooted to the spot, oblivious to the charms of all the other birds in the woods. Today, the diver became my lesser spot; and I only moved on when I realised I was becoming very cold!

Other birds on the water: Eider, shag, black guillemot, a pair of goosanders, and a second great northern on the far side of the loch. A distant auk was difficult through bins, but a picture later cropped on the computer proved it to be a razorbill. 

It was low tide, and waders running about on the distant spit could just be made out to be ringed plovers and turnstones. Oystercatchers were also present and a couple of greylag geese flew over and went down on the camp-site. I'd heard a curlew calling, and now one flew past me and landed quite close.

At home, the bossy blackcap was still occupying the top spot on the feeder stand trying to keep other birds away. He's been uttering a call I've never heard before - rather like a small raptor, a merlin for instance - especially a young one begging for food.

But the best thing I heard today was the call of a diver from the far side of the loch, a three-note rising call that's something like a yodel - except that yodel always sounds a bit of a daft word. It's difficult to describe, but to my mind it's one of the most melancholy, haunting calls in the natural world. Lars Jonsson in Birds of Europe uses "desolate" which does the job nicely.