Wednesday, March 31, 2021
It's been dreary weather lately, and this morning was no exception, with wind and rain galore. But by early afternoon it had dried up enough for a walk. On West Shore, a great black-backed gull and a hooded crow were sharing a dead fish - or at least, the gull was feeding on the fish and the hoodie was keeping its distance but making the odd little darting foray to grab a morsel when it could.
After a while I walked down to take a look. It was another skate, but a lot smaller than the one I saw in October last year at Ardmair.
Monday, March 22, 2021
A persistent westerly wind made for hard going on our village walk this morning; but a 1st winter Iceland gull flying round at the harbour cheered us up. We battled our way along the edge of the camp-site without seeing much until the river mouth, where two additional Iceland gulls made our struggles worth it.
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Yesterday: The golden eagles were far away - possibly 7 or 8 kilometres - and one at least of them was an immature bird.
In fact my walk could be called a story of pairings. These stonechats were back on their breeding territory, and I heard a little of the male's song.
Somewhere down near the quarry, out of sight from the hill path, a mistle thrush was singing. Later I saw a pair at a distance, foraging in the sheep field - my first of the year.
There was frogspawn in one of the puddles. I don't know what the white stuff is that's surrounding some of the eggs - when I googled it, all I could find was mention of white in the centre of the egg, which means they haven't been fertilised. Perhaps it's some kind of fungus.
Even if it's not, no doubt this puddle will dry up again and the tadpoles will die. Still, if the frogs don't care, why should I?
A pair of buzzards flew over me calling and on the ridge to the north, ravens were active. I enjoyed my walk, and the rain kindly kept off until I'd reached home.
Sunday, March 07, 2021
Despite the uninviting weather I took the usual village walk. The Iceland gull was still around the harbour, boldly landing near some men working on a fishing boat.
Wednesday, March 03, 2021
It was quite a bit colder today, and I took a brisk walk round the village. A skylark was a first for the year; I almost missed it as it crept around on the waste ground of the bull park.
The bar-tailed godwit was on the golf-course spit - with oystercatchers, as usual. I first saw this wader on February 17th, but I know it had been seen several days before that; so I suppose it could soon be described as the long-staying godwit.
A great northern diver was far out on the loch, and three even more distant auks looked like guillemots. Two common scoter were present.
Tuesday, March 02, 2021
Once we'd left the well-trodden Ullapool hill paths it was tough going through heather and bogs; I was very tired, and with a couple of kilometres still to plod to the top of the knobbly hill that had been our destination I knew it was beyond me. We just sat on the ridge for lunch, enjoying the silence and the views on this beautiful day, before making our way down to the quarry road.
Some droppings made us hopeful of red grouse, but we saw no further signs. As we descended from the ridge, we looked up at a contrail to see a large plane seemingly with two escorts - but when I uploaded and cropped the photo, Greger realised that this was mid-air refuelling, with a third fighter jet tucked in behind the big tanker.
And that, apart from a solitary buzzard, was the only thing airborne we spotted today!
