Christine's walking & birds blog

Yesterday: A fraught pelagic spent mostly at the upper rails with all the problems that brings - cold hands, watering eyes, shaky optics - brought glimpses of several whales (probably minkes), a few pods of dolphins, some Manx and sooty shearwaters, and four great skuas. My new camera certainly allows me to locate and follow birds better than the old one, thanks to an improved viewfinder; otherwise, I don't get on with it very well yet. 

By the time I got to Stornoway I was tired and fed up. As it was Saturday, there's a longer turnaround time, so I walked to my right from the ferry terminal and found a seat overlooking the water where I ate my sandwiches. A herring gull landed on the wall and hopefully watched me eat. It had one dark eye, and one pale-irised adult eye. A curlew flew past low. I then walked on to the Coastguard Station, and there in the messy area sloping down to the water - rock armour decked out with detritus both natural and manmade - a flash of white caught my eye and betrayed the presence of a fly-catching wheatear.

The dandelion-like wildflowers were a rich golden yellow, with dense white clocks. Hawksbeard? Sow thistle? I'm still looking them up. Anyway, the wheatear cheered me, and I didn't bother too much about whether it could be a Greenlander; the criteria regarding the identification of this race seem to change with every article I read. Seven primary tips were visible, but the bird didn't strike me as being unusually large.

The return trip brought more tantalisingly brief whale sightings - I've been spoilt for evermore now, having had a minke breach right in front of my eyes! I willed it to happen again for the cetacean watchers on board, but it wasn't to be. And I failed dismally yet again to spot a petrel. Greger says I would see more if I didn't try to photograph everything and I know he's right. My camera - no, more accurately my blog, has become a tyrant.