Christine's walking & birds blog

I paid my first visit of the summer to the boggy forest paths where dragonflies hunt, but found only common darters and a very active and elusive blueish hawker. On the south-facing side of a rocky knoll, the sombre grey-green moss held patches of lovely English stonecrop.

The bright bell heather is in flower now - mostly on the ground, but here appearing to have climbed up a young conifer.

Yesterday we went on the ferry.  It was a bit windier than we'd bargained for and we had two sharp showers of rain. A single Manx shearwater was the best bird. Several pods of common dolphins and a few porpoises were seen. Approaching Stornoway we could see a cruise ship to our left - and, just before that, a large number of sea-birds (predominantly gannets) both on the water and circling above. Greger got a glimpse of something large with a fin. After the turnaround and on the way out, we were ready for action but it was still difficult to get a picture of the whale. We were on the lower deck as the funnel rail was busy, so we didn't get the advantage of the extra height above the sea. 

This was our first whale of the year; it was probably a minke, and my picture is timed at 14.13.  It still rankles that on our trip to Lewis in May, we failed to see anything on our morning watch - while practically every day since, there have been whales and dolphins and basking sharks galore reported from Tiumpan Head. It's my own fault; instead of being a cheapskate I should have paid for three nights away instead of two, and then we might have had a better chance of actually seeing something!