Lochore Meadows

 We finished January off with a walk down the Meadies. It was a lovely but very cold couple of hours. The highlights were some very busy Bullfinch;

A Great White Egret from the nature reserve hide:

and a couple of squabbling Treecreepers, this one won the bragging rights and stayed put:

Other birds of note were Long-tail

ed Tit,

a couple of Grey Heron

Goldeneye on the Loch,

and a Robin sunning itself:

Other birds seen or heard were, Cormorant, Teal, Mallard, Coot, Moorhen, Chaffinch, Blue Tit, Blackbird, Great Tit, Mistle Thrush, Wren, Magpie, Pied Wagtail, Jackdaw, Crow, Woodpigeon and Mute Swan.

Always a great time down the Meadies! (As long as we have coffee!)

A Week in Wester Ross

 We've had a quiet start to the birding year, we've had so much on! However we managed to get away for a week and booked a cottage in Aultbea overlooking the sea.

Most of the birding was pretty distant, with very little coming near the shore apart from a pair of Red breasted Mergansers.

Around Aultbea we did find quite a few birds though, but getting some decent photos proved difficult, although this Common Gull posed nicely

as did a few Lapwing.

We visited Poolewe a few times and made use of the hide at the National Trust Inverewe estate, although the windows don't open fully and they were filthy!

Anyway, we did manage a few sightings, over our visits; Grey Heron,

Cormorant,

Buzzard,

and Curlew.

We were delighted to see an Otter as dusk set in, again not close, but for the record:

We did a lot of mooching about exploring various roads, this wasn't in a Glen but definitely a Monarch:

I'll wrap this up now with a few more photos while we were out and about:

Godwits,

Ringed Plover

and snow on the Mountains after Storm Eowyn.