Christine's walking & birds blog

We walked from home on this warm sunny day, following a well-worn path to the top of Maol Chalaisgeig - where the wind nearly blew me over! During the ascent, a cuckoo's fluty notes rang out across the river gorge, and as we paused for breath on a steep bit, a grasshopper warbler's reeling was heard from the hillside below. The reeling seemed to come from an area of grass, heather, dead bracken, pine trees, and birches; but although we stood there for some time I couldn't pinpoint the exact source of the sound (unfortunately, Greger can no longer hear it at all) and we failed to spot the bird. It was still good to hear it though, and although this is a small hill, it is still a hill - so grasshopper warbler makes its debut on my hill-walking list!

The ferry was going down the loch towards the Summer Isles as I locked my car on West Terrace this morning - and I thought "There goes my heart". But I've vowed there will be no pelagics this year until May at least, as they have become a bit of an addiction!

Yesterday, two brief bouts of reeling at Keanchulish made me hopeful of seeing a grasshopper warbler today, but there was no sign, so I drove on to Knockan as I needed some exercise. Near the bottom of the trail a stonechat flew from rock to rock.....

.....while a bit higher, a wheatear watched me from a (limestone?) outcrop.

There seemed to be a handful of new wagtails on the beach at Ardmair. They were very active and wary, but I thought there was a scattering of white-wagtail features - clean flanks, pale grey rump, fairly distinct black-grey line at the nape - although I'm not sure these were all seen on one bird!

 

Keanchulish car-park area held at least three singing willow warblers, but there was no sign yet of cuckoos or grasshopper warblers. Back in Ullapool, I walked through the bull park to the spit and was thrilled to hear a cuckoo from the other side of the loch - exactly the same as last year, only a day later. My first sand martins of the year were swooping energetically above the grassy area and the river, and my first lesser black-backed gull in the village was with herring gulls on the end of the spit.

Two greenshanks were also energetic, repeatedly flying out low over the water in a circle and then returning to the golf-course spit. It felt warm in the sun today, but there is still a sharp edge to the wind.

My first bogbeans of the spring were in the roadside "snipe pool" on this sunny, coldish day in the Coigach area - but only this one was in full flower. The flowers are the pin form.

There is something exuberant about the bogbean, but I find it's best appreciated from a little way away through bins or photographed; the picture below shows how tiny it really is.

From the Black Isle, you can look across the Cromarty Firth and see, atop a largely forested hill, a man-made structure known as the Fyrish Monument. This was built in 1782 on the orders of Sir Hector Munro, and modelled on the gates of Negapatam in India - where Munro had served in the British Army. The project gave work to local men at the time of the clearances, when landowners like Munro had forced people from their homes to make way for the latest money spinner - sheep. But it's also a very noticeable landmark possibly built to glorify his military career. Whichever it was, the walk to the top of this 453-metre hill is very popular, with most of it winding up through plantations and only near the summit opening up to bare grassland and heather.

Greger looks out over the Cromarty Firth towards the Black Isle:

We'd looked forward to great views all round, especially of the less familiar side of Ben Wyvis; but the cloud was down over the higher tops and distances were misty. I'd also had some thoughts of "popping over" to the neighbouring hill of Cnoc Ceislein to bag the triangulation pillar - but it now looked much further away than I'd bargained for, and we're not hill-fit yet. It took me some time to locate the trig point through my bins - until I realised that instead of the usual conspicuous dark block, this one was ghostly white.

We set off down, deciding to eat our lunch in the car as it was decidedly chilly on the summit. Coming up we'd heard coal tit, siskin, wren, chaffinch, and crossbill in the plantation - and now we caught sight of a male crossbill, which didn't hang about for a better photo than this.

It had been a sociable climb, with most people giving us a cheerful greeting and lots of children enjoying being out in the open air - although a couple of them, on reaching the top, immediately sat down, got their phones out, and started scrolling!

 🎵 "I'm washing on sunshine....wo-oh!" (as Katrina & the Waves didn't sing).

It's true, though - I've just completed a machine wash of socks (and a short tumble) and Greger said the electricity meter remained the same. He's now put the car on charge, so when we go out tomorrow he'll be driving on sunshine. Wo-oh.

My first willow warbler of the year was heard and then seen at the entrance to Keanchulish Estate.

A greenshank far out on the golf-course spit was my first for the year in Ullapool. Yesterday, I walked the round at Ardmair (caravan site now open) and was pleased to hear the singing of twite. A third individual was foraging on the ground.

Back in March we went to Edinburgh to buy a coat-and-shoe stand from Ikea, as solar-panel installations in the wash-room meant the old coat hooks there had to go. Idly looking at the map of the coast, I noticed that between the Forth bridges and the Premier Inn where we stay at Newhaven Quay, is Cramond - and suggested to Greger that we pay a visit to its famous island. Cramond has cropped up in my reading several times over the years, notably in Kidnapped (R.L. Stevenson), in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark), and most recently in one of the Jackson Brodie books (One Good Turn) by Kate Atkinson - where Jackson nearly gets caught out by the incoming tide (apparently, quite a few people really do get cut off, and have to be rescued by Queensferry RNLI). Where you walk down to the causeway, there is a large noticeboard with tide tables on it. 

I left home early this morning to leave parking room for the guys coming to start connecting the solar panels up. At Achnahaird it was practically high tide, so I walked round the other side of the dunes - and spotted my first wheatears of the year. 

As I walked back to the car park across the low cliffs, the sound of pink-footed geese came faintly to my ears, grew louder, and eventually faded into the distance without my clapping eyes on the birds at all! There didn't seem to be anything much on the water, but another sound - a sort of peevish wail - alerted me to a pair of red-throated divers out in the middle of the bay. Two more skeins of vocal pink-foots approached from the south; they flew quite low and seemed to contemplate landing - but in the end I lost them against the fierce sun.

Across the headland there were two more wheatears at Badentarbat, sparring in a ditch. I sat in the car having lunch, and watched a buzzard hovering. A few minutes later, some gulls making a fuss made me look up to see several of them mobbing a raptor. Assuming it was the buzzard I didn't pay much attention to begin with - until I realised that the mobbers were great black-backs, which made the raptor a bit bigger than a buzzard!

The sub-adult white-tailed sea eagle flew strongly past my car and vanished over the moorland towards Ben More Coigeach.

On the way out of the area, I'd planned to pull in by the plantation to listen out for snipe; but there were loads of sheep lounging around there, and when I stepped out of the car they all ran towards me bleating piteously. They thought I was going to feed them. I felt a bit rotten about that, so I got back in - at which the bleating died away. If you want to know what disappointed sheep look like - well, they look like this.

However, I got a second chance a bit further along the road. Driving with the window down, I heard a distinct bit of a snipe's chipper call, rising from the moorland leading down to the loch. I parked when I could and walked back, without much hope of seeing the bird but wanting to hear the call again. But it must have been close to the road because it suddenly erupted from the grass and bog myrtle and zig-zagged away into the sky. Fortunately, it had already turned and was coming back towards the road as I set off back to my car, so I stopped watching it. And then I heard the thrilling sound of drumming (or thrumming, which suggests something less percussive) so I stood by my car and tried hard to locate the bird in the air again - with no success. (What the snipe does with its tail feathers is also called winnowing - which is rather nice.)