Monday, June 01, 2026
Yesterday we took a walk up the quarry road and to my great delight I heard a wood warbler singing. Greger couldn't hear it, but he's fairly sure he saw it.
I walked up there again this afternoon after the rain stopped, but the wood warbler was either silent or had moved on. I heard a tree pipit singing but the bird was distant and remained unseen. A male cuckoo came flying across the sheep field at the top of the road, and a bit later I heard the "wikwikwik" call of a female - again, unseen. Above the river pool, I hoped for my first dragonfly of the year, but there was nothing. I would never have seen this tiny beetle - so well-camouflaged was it - if I hadn't noticed something fly towards me and then land on the wet rocks. I've since identified it as a two-banded longhorn (Rhagium bifasciatum).
The white-tailed eagle flew across as I drew level with the lower quarry; it turned once and came towards me, then did a sort of mid-air stop.....
.....and I wondered if it had caught something. Nearby, swallows and house martins were flying high in circles, so something good in the insect line was up there - but would an eagle bother with such tiny morsels? Anyway, it soon turned and continued on its original course and I lost it over the edge of the hill.
A recent trip over east to Alness brought the sad sight of a dead wych elm (Ulmus glabra) - with a neighbouring tree clearly also suffering (presumably Dutch elm disease).
I'm glad that somewhere, I have photos of the tree that I took when it was flourishing, and some close-ups of both leaves and seeds. We walked through the woodland but there was nothing like the birdlife we've encountered here before. Greger commented "We've come all this way and all we got was a dead tree!" - but an osprey saved the day, flying up the Cromarty Firth and disappearing inland. No terns went up from the shingle bank as it passed over - were we too early for them?
A visit to Achnahaird brought a sanderling - for once, a rather brighter individual than the greyish ones I usually seem to see.
I've given up listening for grasshopper warblers at one site; the estate has got rid of much of the bog myrtle which the warblers used as song-posts. I thought this might be to make a grassier, more open habitat, suitable for game birds - and this was confirmed when a red-legged partridge, which I hadn't noticed, walked away from the fence as I got out of the car.
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It was wary of me, but not panicky; no doubt because by now it's used to people. Come the autumn it will run the gauntlet of paying guns - a non-native creature imported for that very purpose.
// posted by Christine @ 1:26 PM 
