Christine's walking & birds blog

We did some very wet gardening on this day of alternating sunny spells and showers. The first sparrowhawk I've seen for some time flew over - escorted by a rook. A bit later, I was lucky enough to spot fifteen whooper swans flying high to the south just before they were lost to sight.

// posted by Christine @ 1:39 PM 0 comments

Yesterday: What a strange pelagic! To begin with, the lady in the terminal warned me that there could be disruption with the 17.30 sailing from Ullapool. I couldn't really see how that would affect us - unless it meant that the disruption would begin in Stornoway - so I bought the tickets anyway, and then regretted that I hadn't waited to consult Greger, who had diverted to Tesco to buy a newspaper. It wouldn't normally be too much of a hardship to get a B&B in Stornoway for the night should we get stuck, but it would mean he would miss his Spanish lesson the following day. Anyway, when he arrived, he said it was okay. Next, we were informed that the passenger gangway was undergoing repairs (the Stornoway one has been out of action for two or three years), so we would have to exit the terminal building again, and walk round to enter via the car deck.

A white-winger on the dockside was probably the viking gull, and a small bird that flew over us and seemed to land somewhere on the ferry was possibly a house sparrow. The weather as we set sail down Loch Broom was wonderful; warm and sunny, with a relatively calm sea and good visibility. Trouble was, there was nothing much to see (well, apart from various military vessels on the horizon, taking part in NATO manoeuvres). As we neared Stornoway, the wind got up quite suddenly, and I decided I could safely eat my lunch. Needless to say, I then spotted a Manx shearwater - but couldn't do anything sensible with my camera as I had my hands and mouth full of bacon sandwich.

At Stornoway, there was a shorter wait than usual to get off via the car deck, probably thanks to less traffic. The vehicle queues waiting to board also seemed sort of shrunken - just two large trucks, and only small campervans (no "great whites"). Back on board, the difference from the morning trip was immediately obvious. The wind was quite strong, and it was now cold enough to warrant hat and gloves. I was surprised to see two small birds fly over me towards the rear of the boat - and keep going! Were they house sparrows? And where were they going? Somewhere in the Minch an announcement came that the Coastguard would be doing one of its training exercises - and my heart sank. No hope of birds while that went on! Still, it's quite exciting, and some passengers came out from the indoor seating areas to watch two men be winched separately down onto the vehicle deck before one "rescued" the other by taking him up in a special harness.

This was a first for my ferry list, but I would feel happier about that if I could be sure they made land safely. 

Coming into Ullapool, we foot passengers gathered towards the rear of the ferry to exit via the vehicle deck - once all the vehicles were off, of course. The member of staff who was good-humouredly marshalling us was approached by someone dangling her car keys - she couldn't get through the door onto the car deck. Greger and I looked at one another. Why on earth was she trying to access the car deck now? They routinely call drivers to return to their vehicles before the ferry even docks - and now it had docked, and they were already off-loading. Having seen her down the stairs, the man appeared again and called out "Any more car drivers?" and four people stood up from the rear observation lounge where they had been sitting - from where they could easily see the vehicles leaving the ferry just below them! The man escorted them to the head of the stairs and then returned, muttering "We'll get there in the end!" to much laughter.

Presumably the potential disruption was because the strong winds had been forecast - but whether the ferry did sail back to Stornoway this evening, I've no idea.

// posted by Christine @ 4:16 AM 0 comments

An early distant minke whale was spotted in Annat Bay from the ferry on this unpromising drizzly morning - and the first good bird was a dark-phase Arctic skua, flying low over the water.  There were several groups on board and I could only get rail room facing south; I turned now and then to scan the sea to the north and at last saw loads of shearwaters! I managed to squeeze in on the end of the group - but what with the restricted room, the strongish wind, and the swift flight of the birds, my pics weren't much cop (well, nothing unusual there!).

My pics of both the sooty feeding flock and the great shearwater on its own were timed at around an hour from Stornoway.

I also had the chance of seeing my first ever Leach's petrel on this trip; a group leader ran over to the south rail to call it down to the birders below - but I resisted the temptation to "twitch". After all, I wasn't one of his group, but I'm content in any case for Leach's petrel to remain unseen - a potential self-found lifer, to provide as much surprise and joy as today's great shearwater and last year's pomarine skua.

// posted by Christine @ 12:07 PM 0 comments

Yesterday: A white-winger was spotted then lost in Loch Broom, as the ferry returned to Ullapool after a windy, sunny pelagic. I shot hopefully into the gathering of gulls - and managed to catch it.

// posted by Christine @ 4:06 AM 0 comments

After more research I've decided to record the bee spotted on our little local hill more than a week ago as a heath bumblebee (Bombus jonellus). In the info found online, the heath bumblebee is often described as being noticeably fluffy - which certainly fits the individual seen nectaring on the top of the hill in the heather.  When Greger and I went up the hill again three days ago, we got a glimpse of something like it but I couldn't get a decent shot. However, there was compensation in a hoverfly that wasn't familiar, which I've finally identified as Eriozona syrphoides (common name bear syrph or bear fly).

As for the broken-belted bumblebee that I might or might not have seen towards the end of my hill-walk on August 30th - well, I'm not so sure. It could be a white-tailed with the central yellow hairs worn away (the lemony yellow of the bands pointing to white-tailed rather than red) while my bee certainly doesn't have the neat look of a broken-belted on the assyntwildlife website. Oh well, at least I've learned about a new bumblebee species, even if I haven't seen one yet. From what I can gather, they are rather scarce.

Meanwhile, things are livening up in Loch Broom, with feeding frenzies of gulls and gannets occurring towards high tide over the last few days. Dolphins and whales might be possible, but if I'm to spot any special gulls, I'll need them to come closer to shore. As I came away from the very windy golf-course spit, I saw this female black darter, zipping around near the allotments.

On the spit itself, just before high tide, were a few common gulls, a handful of oystercatchers, and a dozen ringed plovers; while two adult turnstone were also sheltering from the weather with ten or eleven juveniles.

// posted by Christine @ 8:56 AM 0 comments

Beinn Liath Mhor a' Ghiubhais Li

I set off on this rather gloomy morning unsure whether I would make it to the top. Most of the hills around - including mine - had their heads in cloud; and the Met Office had indicated a fairly high risk of rain. I crossed the stream easily and walked up the stony, 2-kilometre track through the plantation. There was no sign of any bird life. As I took to the saturated, muddy hillside, I was suddenly beset by midges - badly enough to take my rucksack off and fish out the netted hat. Oh dear. Either my head has shrunk, or I'd grabbed Greger's hat; either way, it immediately slipped down over my eyes and was completely useless. In the end I took it off and used it to flap at the midges while holding both walking poles awkwardly in one hand.

Eventually I left the midges behind, and even the seemingly interminable steep, wet area of long grass and heather came to an end. Next stage - the peat hags. Well, at least the ground here is almost level. This gives you a breather for the next stage, which is again grass and heather, with patches of squelchy sphagnum moss. Meadow pipits were the only birds to be seen until half a dozen red grouse erupted from the ground ahead and glided off to the left and out of sight.

Arctic bearberry, its leaves turning a deep red, sprawled characteristically across a lichened boulder.

For obvious reasons, I wondered if it could be a broken-belted bumblebee (which I hadn't heard of before my investigations online this evening); but it doesn't seem quite right for that species, and in any case white-tailed bumblebees can become a bit worn towards the end of the summer. Also, this does have a bright white tail. An adult black darter dragonfly and a colourful frog were also spotted here. As I stepped thankfully onto hard ground at the start of the track, I was besieged by black flies - not midges, larger. I scrambled to get the useless hat out of the rucksack again, but by the time I had succeeded in getting it on and pulling the drawstring tight at the bottom of the netting, it was only to find that some of the flies were in there with me. Eek! Again, I took off the hat and used it to keep flapping the flies away as I made my escape. After a while, they stopped following, and all I had to worry about was the bunion on my left foot becoming a little sore and the fact that it had begun to rain - a light shower that soon passed over. I'd been lucky with the weather - unlucky with ptarmies.

// posted by Christine @ 10:56 AM 0 comments

Two days ago I walked up the quarry road in bright sunshine, spotting a bright male common darter in the usual place....

It was warm enough to convert my walking trousers into shorts, and having stuffed the "legs" into my backpack, I set off up the hill path. When I reached the turnoff to Maol Chalaisgeig (that's a blooming long name to type for a very small hill - 301m!) I decided to go up. It got more and more windy as I climbed, and at the top it was really quite cold. I put my fleece on, but didn't bother with the trouser legs as they're much harder to zip back on than off! 

A gorgeously yellow bumblebee nectaring on now-fading bell heather made me wonder if I'd found my first heath bumblebee. The yellow hair on the face apparently means it's a male.

I'm not 100% sure though; it could be a white-tailed bumblebee, although I've seen several of those in the garden this year and this one looked different. More research to be done, as usual. There was also a Sericomyia silentis (referred to sometimes as the bog hoverfly, but tagged yellow-barred peat fly by Steven Falk on Flickr).

 

Further down the slope, a nice tawny/chestnut moth fluttered into the sparse undergrowth, but I got enough of it in the picture to identify it back home - although it took some time. It's a chevron moth (Eulithis testata).

I was pleased to find that I coped okay with the walk, and Greger (having had another, shorter, bout of his cold) decided he would do it today - in fact, we agreed to do it together. However, we woke up to grey drizzly weather that didn't invite walking anywhere, so I sat down to write this blog instead. The question is, will we get up a sizeable hill this summer? I would love to do a hill-walk for its own sake, but if I don't, there's also the risk that ptarmigan won't make it onto my year list - for the first time since we came to live here. :o( 

// posted by Christine @ 7:04 AM 0 comments