Christine's walking & birds blog

Yesterday: It was set to rain all day here, with drier weather over east; so when Greger suggested a trip to Inverness I readily agreed - not without ulterior motives of a birdy kind. It was a relatively successful shopping trip as I actually bought a couple of clothing items, and we had a nice lunch in Girvans. A walk by the river brought what I'd hoped for but hadn't really expected, given how slow the spring has been so far. 

Swifts! We saw three together but there were probably more. They swooped over the river with swallows and martins, but also went up really high; they were the icing on the cake of an enjoyable visit.

I was going to say that Inverness is as far as I've been in the last two and a half years - but we did have a trip down to the Cairngorms last month. And I've had the pelagics of course. These are my own mini-cruises - although there's nothing relaxing about them, filled as they are with frantic attempts to spot, identify, and photograph fast-moving birds from a fairly fast-moving ferry. Can't wait for the next one!

The previous day, I'd seen my first sanderlings of the year at Achnahaird, with probably c100 dunlin and smaller numbers of ringed plover.

A restless whimbrel was twice seen flying at a distance, and over at Badentarbat, in a ferocious wind with spatters of rain, a beautiful white-winger flew past - while I was eating my sandwiches, naturally. It looked especially gorgeous in the grim weather. Several Bonxies were seen. There were still no lapwings on the machair - but there were loads of hoodies, which seemed to make the waders uneasy when they flew over them and landed nearby.