Monday, March 28, 2022
A day of misty sunshine in the Coigach area brought my first greenshank of the year. It was remarkably immobile for a greenshank and sometimes had its eyes closed; presumably it was exhausted after a long flight.
A walk from the beach car park brought a snipe, flushed from a ditch on the machair; it rose with a squeaky call, flew further along the ditch - and went down again. Two wheatears were on the salt-marsh and nine or ten golden plover flew around restlessly. A great northern diver out in the bay also looked sleepy - although it might have closed its eyes against the cold north wind that, blowing straight in off the sea, seemed to me to cancel out the warmth of the sun.
The diver appears to be carrying what could be a gift of food as it was swimming behind a second individual with less advanced summer plumage.
Across the headland two black-throated divers, still looking very wintry in black and white plumage, loafed about near the shore - keeping, whether by accident or design, to the shimmering, dazzling path of the sun's reflected light. If I moved to get a better position - so did they. All photos rubbish.
Driving back to the junction lay-by I got out to have a last sweep of the river and salt-marsh. There was no sign of the greenshank but it might have been tucked in below the field where it would be hidden. And then something nice happened. I heard the drumming of a snipe - brief and faint but unmistakeable. I caught a glimpse of the bird in the sky before it plummeted, and I lost it against the drab moorland.
I think this might be the first time I've heard this lovely sound since May 2016, when we had walked the length of Loch a' Bhraoin to climb Creag Rainich. I stated in that post that we weren't sure if it was a snipe "or the thrumming of fence wires in the wind" until we actually spotted the bird, high up. An entry on Wikipedia refers to folklore in some parts of Sweden, where they decided a horse had been transported into the sky because they thought the drumming sounded like a horse's whinny. I read it out to Greger, to see if he would defend his countrymen - but he only said "They were probably drunk."
