Christine's walking & birds blog

A sunny, calm day was a great relief after all the wind and rain, and I was drawn back to Ardmair. Tired of slogging along the pebbly beach (other people walk through the camp-site and stand at the end overlooking the spit, but I always feel that if I do this I'll get thrown out!) I walked round by the chalets and out onto the stone pier. At first I thought a couple of mini feeding frenzies were getting going, but they seemed to fizzle out quite quickly as if they were false alarms. However, the presence of at least three dolphins over by the fish farm confirmed that there were fish to be had.

But I failed to see the Med gull on this visit. Two days ago, a short walk in the village brought my first kittiwakes of the year; this adult on a heap of dredged(?) material on the works site.....

.....which I snapped with great difficulty between two sections of security fencing; and an immature bird out on the harbour. The day before that we'd been to Udale Bay and Cromarty, where new year birds were dunlin, teal, knot, bar-tailed godwit, and scaup (one solitary female of these); but pink-footed geese were absent. Never mind, our trip to Edinburgh had given us a sighting - at Perth services of all places! We'd pulled in to charge up the Tesla and were walking down to the shop for carryout Costa coffees (which, usually okay, were so vile that we threw them in the bin after a couple of sips) when a familiar pleasant racket made me look up to see a skein of pink-foots crossing the sky.

// posted by Christine @ 1:06 PM 0 comments

After the Mediterranean Gull last week, I spent a couple of days zooming back and forth between Ardmair, Ullapool harbour, and the river spit but had no further sightings. Then we went to Edinburgh for a couple of days to get the Tesla serviced - this and a similar visit before Christmas being the only two nights I've slept away from home in over three years. Today, I managed to get out in an interval between showers and saw the gull immediately on pulling into the lay-by. I leaned across to wind the window down on the passenger's side (not a wise move with my history of bad backs) and grabbed a few shots as the gull drifted away along the beach.

I wondered vaguely why the wind was so strong inside the car - so bad, in fact, that I had to put on my hat and gloves as I sat there with the driver's window open. I thought with a sinking heart how much worse the rust on the bodywork was than I'd previously realised - and it was only when I was about to drive away that I noticed the window on the passenger side was still open. Der.

Yesterday: The wind was ferocious! From the lay-by at Ardmair I could see a huge number of gulls over the fish-farm, but my intended walk ended at the camp-site entrance where I nearly got blown off my feet. Returning to the village, I walked out onto the river spit and scanned the few gulls on the distant golf-course spit. A white-winger immediately caught my eye (and it looks as though I caught his!) but whether it was a pure glaucous or the viking gull, I don't know.

An immature white-winger was also present, and this too raised questions of identity. I thought Iceland at first, but in this picture the head comes to a peak towards the rear (glaucous), while there also seems to be a marked tertial step; but is the primary projection too long for a glaucous?

After a while the gull stood up, and the deep chest seemed to say glaucous - while the smallish bill said Iceland.

The gull then took off and began to fly low over the river, landing now and then on the water and plunging its head in, to emerge with what looked like lumps of seaweed. These it took to the shore - perhaps to disentangle mussels from it. Don't know. Couldn't see. All this would have been a gift on a calm day - but the wind was really quite savage - and although I was sitting on a (fairly uncomfortable) rock, I couldn't hold the bins or camera still for long. Here, the gull looks glaucous-ish.

Finally the gull swam out into the channel and had a bit of a wash.....

.....which drove me even madder, because now it seemed to display the neat head and bill of an Iceland gull. I mean, if I just had this picture to go by, I'd say Iceland. I will. "Iceland." Later: Or glaucous.

// posted by Christine @ 8:16 AM 0 comments

Mid-afternoon I drove to Ardmair, and as I pulled into the lay-by I thought I saw a white winger flying away from me and out to sea. Blast! A few minutes later it came back towards the shore and then flew over to the fish farm. I clicked away, never thinking for a moment that it could be a black-headed gull; it was very pale and flew more strongly. But when I looked at one of the photos on the camera monitor, I could definitely see a red bill. Then - "Wow! What if it's a Mediterranean gull?" Having now looked at the photos on the computer, I think it probably is.

// posted by Christine @ 8:02 AM 0 comments