Monday, November 15, 2021

Last week my car failed its MOT for the first time ever, with a hole underneath in front of the rear offside wheel; but the body shop couldn't repair it at the time and we drove it home, not sure whether this was legal or not (the current MOT still has a week to run). The car was booked in for four days this week, so this morning I set off for Inverness at 6.30am, hoping that there would be no police van with cameras in one of the lay-bys (I assumed that my car would be on the database as having failed its MOT). There wasn't, and I handed the car in just after eight with Greger arriving about 10 minutes later.

We drove across the Black Isle and headed for Tarbat Ness, which juts out between the openings to the Firths of Dornoch and Moray. The rain eventually stopped and we set off for a walk round the headland, with the lighthouse looking very imposing in the November sun.


In the surrounding area of maritime heath, stonechat is one bird which you can usually depend on year-round, perching on gorse bushes and scolding as you follow the path through the heather; we saw two today. The sea seemed empty at first but then we picked out a few gannets, a flock of scoter far out (with a bright white rectangular patch on the useless picture I got suggesting that one at least was a velvet), auks flying in strings across the water, and three male long-tailed ducks scudding by just below. A fisherman coming away pointed out what we'd already unfortunately seen - a guillemot standing on rocks at the water's edge with a black stain on its underparts. Whenever this happens (not that it's happened often) I feel that as a birder I should know what to do, but I'm not sure what anyone could have done; the bird was lively, preening vigorously, and we couldn't have approached it without scaring it back into the water. Maybe it would be okay. Greger pointed out a shag that had clearly not been okay - a victim, presumably, of recent severe storms. I think the dwarf shrub that looks very green against the bleached grass is crowberry.


In the other direction, I was lucky to find two purple sandpipers asleep on the rocks.


Now and then one or other would "wake up" and have a good look at me, before going back to a wader's own version of sleep.


What else has happened? We had a visitor last weekend, which was nice, and we've both had our Covid booster jabs. Now I have to wait until Friday to get my car back. Meanwhile Greger's offered me the Toyota if I want to go out birding on my own, but I'm not too confident as I haven't driven it for ages. He's also trying to get me to have a go in the Tesla, which he says is really easy to drive. That's as may be, but it's also rather wide - even wider than the Toyota. It sounds pathetic, but I really only feel comfortable these days driving my Fiesta.

// posted by Christine @ 11:05 AM
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