Christine's walking & birds blog

A second visit to the valley of the bone caves brought more mountain avens in flower - although plenty of buds promised an even better show to come.

Going back down, we were stopped in our tracks by the rapid bubbling call of a female cuckoo. We never located it, so perhaps it had been flying over. Two male cuckoos had been calling for much of our walk and one was seen flying above the bone caves. The "puddle" in the picture below was a dry hole full of tumbled boulders and sand on our last visit; but we've had an enormous amount of rain since then and a spring somewhere below has come to life and sent water surging down to join the stream to the left. Behind me, that stream dries up; so it's this spring and several others below it that supply the rushing river and waterfall seen lower down the valley.

I was reading about the last near-glacial period of about 12,000 years ago when my imagination was caught by its name - the Younger Dryas. It comes from the wildflower Dryas octopetala, or mountain avens as it's commonly called. This is because parts of the flower have been found in fossilised remains from both this and the Older Dryas (wildflowerfinder.org.uk), although another source (which I've forgotten) put it in a slightly different way - that this is one of the first plants to recolonise an area once the ice sheet has retreated. That's a lovely idea. At any rate, it's a plant that loves the cold, and it's almost always found in areas of limestone. I'd read online that the path up to the bone caves was a good place to look for it, so today we walked that path - half wishing we were continuing on up to the summit of Breabag once again. 

The bone caves are spooky and worth a look, although I guess some children are disappointed that there are no bones to be seen there now. Come to that, I'm disappointed there are no bones to be seen there now!  

We carried on along the path that traversed the steep slopes....

.....and at last found what we were searching for. I noticed the dark green, crinkly leaves first, and then found some buds. There were only a few fully opened flowers, so I'll have to come back in a week or so.

We rested at the bottom of the cliff and "cuckoo" rang out several times - with such a hollow tone that I thought the bird was actually inside one of the caves. But there it was on the skyline, above the caves, with a meadow pipit visible now and then protesting against its presence.

On the way back down, Greger pointed out some ghostly palmate newts in a very dark and murky pool - my first newts of the year.

We failed to see ring ouzels or dippers on our walk but did record a singing wheatear, a male stonechat, two ravens, a buzzard, and a willow warbler.

I was about to turn on the shower when a loud, repeated  tapping came from above; and I could just see a large bill at the bottom of the skylight. It was quite a comical sight so I grabbed a towel, climbed out of the bath, and fetched my camera. By the time I'd gone back into the bathroom, the gull had stepped onto the glass itself.

It had stopped tapping but was casting quizzical looks downwards. "It's your own reflection, dopey!" I yelled. But it took quite a lot of shouting and waving of arms before the gull lifted off and flew away. The daftest herring gull on the west coast, and we have to get it on our roof!

It was the wrong day really for a pelagic but Greger was game so we walked down to the harbour in the rain, trusting that the weather forecast for a better afternoon would prove correct. Once again the trip out was fairly quiet (I'm not saying there was nothing to be seen, just that I didn't manage to see it!) apart from my first terns of the year. Greger was down buying coffee so he missed these. They were a long way out on a fairly exciting sea, so I can't say whether they were common or Arctic; but it was still a nice sighting.

On the way back we both had good views of a skua just ahead of us and converging with the ferry. It was difficult to hold the camera steady and I couldn't get any better shots than these; it was only as I clicked off the last one that I was aware of a second bird closer in.

Turnstone and dunlin, foraging in the tidewrack at Badentarbat, were photobombed by a pied wagtail.

Two singing tree pipits were seen on a walk up the quarry road.... 

.....and a grey wagtail was back on its territory near the river. Willow warblers and one blackcap were singing, and a cuckoo was heard in the distance. It was great to be walking in thin summer trousers and T-shirt - for the first time this year!

 At least two sedge warblers were singing in the village near the river this morning.

A walk up the quarry road brought two singing tree pipits; while a golden eagle, first spotted over a far ridge, flew over the quarry road and was lost behind the trees.

It wasn't my first dunlin of the year (25+ at Achnahaird a few days ago) but it was my first here in the village (on the river spit).

A redwing seen yesterday was possibly a late migrant, but apparently some do breed in the UK.

I've spotted a cuckoo and a swallow at last but chiffchaff, though heard in a couple of places, remains unseen. Wood warbler and grasshopper warbler have been sought but not found. More to the point, will I ever be able to go out without my woolly hat and thermal underwear? They say that spring takes two weeks to travel from southern England to the north of Scotland. No it doesn't. It takes a lifetime.