The whooper swans (at least twenty) were on Loch Raa in the Coigach area.
It was good to see them as whoopers have been absent from Loch Glascarnoch for some weeks. There were two shelduck on the salt-marsh at Achnahaird but no golden plovers, and three or four meadow pipits at Badentarbat - my first for the year. Earlier, I'd been surprised by a chunky reddish-brown bird flying towards the car along the roadside - probably a woodcock. For a second I thought I'd have it on the dash-cam - but then remembered that I'd taken the memory card out to check the footage for a probable merlin seen a few days ago just north of Ullapool and hadn't got round to putting it back in. Unfortunately, there was no sign of the raptor anyway - the dash-cam had been angled down too much, and the bird had been flying quite high.
The Iceland gull was again in the sheep field at Ardmair; I mentioned its "muddied" appearance yesterday, thinking of the churned-up ground it was foraging on - but after better, closer views of the gull today I think the dark underparts are just a natural part of the immature plumage.
