Saturday, February 24, 2024
I was staring into the sun at Aultbea, trying to see if three silhouetted waders were my first redshanks of the year (they were), when I became aware of a loud "yip" or "yap" sort of call and looked around for a dog. But the sound came from above - and there against the blue were two white-tailed sea eagles, making lazy circles around each other just over the road (houses, cars, people, a shop - strange place for courting eagles!).
They were almost too close; I had nothing to lean on and my pictures aren't sharp - but they give a sense of the essential "bigness" of these eagles! At first I thought the calls were coming from what looked like a sparrowhawk, dancing about above them; but the calls seemed much too loud, and besides, some of my shots have caught the eagles with open bills. (Later: BWP has this under Voice for white-tailed eagle: "Used freely, especially during pair-courtship...calls of male in particular often recall yelping of puppy..")
Nestled in the seaweed on a distant rocky spit, a bunch of birds turned out to be my first lapwings of the year. Birds are on the move!
From the high lay-by at Gruinard I could just make out four common scoters on the sea. At Mungasdale, a flock of around 100 barnacle geese on the sheep fields seemed disturbed by buzzard and raven activity on the high ground beyond; and after taking off and flying out over the sea, they landed closer to us on the lovely little sandy beach.
I'd seen a distant Slavonian grebe on Loch Ewe from Aultbea, and on the way home we had closer views of these two on Little Loch Broom.
A golden eagle was spotted from the car.
It was a lovely day weather-wise, with lots of sun and no rain until the drive home. But it was still very cold, and there had been fresh snowfalls on the hills.
// posted by Christine @ 11:18 AM 
