Saturday, September 11, 2021
It's wet and windy today so I've resigned myself to a day of washing and ironing. Lovely. Yesterday, I headed out to Coigach, where I spent half an hour below the rams' field watching about fifty dunlin, a few ringed plover, and a dozen redshanks along the river. At one point I thought a drone was approaching, and looked up - to see instead a flock of ducks flying over low. This of course immediately transformed the sound from something irritating to something attractive! Later, driving past Loch Raa, I pulled in to snap a dark mass of birds on the far side which turned out to be my first wigeon of the autumn.
It was a grey sort of day with mist on the horizon. The beach car park had looked pretty full from the top of the hill, and I decided to give it a miss. I drove across the headland to use the loo and then parked on the grass strip at Badentarbat. There didn't seem to be a great deal about until a juvenile knot flew in. I put my sandwich down and snapped off a few shots.
The knot made frequent runs along the sand while relocating, settling down then in various spots to do its usual plodding foraging, sometimes picking up strands of seaweed with its bill to poke about underneath. Driving out, I stopped again at the junction lay-by - but the small waders seemed to have disappeared, while midges were out in force. Time to go.
