Saturday, September 06, 2025
Day 21 of the flu for me, which makes it seven days longer than the usual dose. Greger wanted to go on the ferry and I'm probably no longer contagious, so off we went. The weather was bright and warm as we left Ullapool and we had high hopes. 50 minutes in, Greger pointed to three birds flying south-east and I clicked off a couple of pictures. I had to wait until I'd uploaded the photos at home before I could brighten them and confirm that these were Brent geese.
There were a few pods of common dolphins around and I saw my first porpoises of the year. As we approached Stornoway the wind got up and there were a couple of showers of rain. We'd forgotten that on Saturday there's a longer turnaround time, and as I didn't feel like walking, we sat in the terminal until reloading. The return trip was colder but slightly less grudging with its sightings, and yielded up a Minke whale, more common dolphins, two or three probable Arctic skuas chasing kittiwakes, several bonxies, and two Manx shearwaters. The Brent geese were a first for the ferry; they were the third first this year after the Risso's dolphins and the basking shark - so they're in good company!
// posted by Christine @ 2:18 PM 
