Islay

We arrived on Islay a week late after re-arranging our accommodation and ferry. The crossing was still a bit rocky, just glad we got there. We were based in Bowmore and despite many reports of divers, grebes and ducks seen from the harbour we saw very little, just some Red-breasted Merganser, our kitchen window overlooked Loch Indaal, seeing plenty of Gulls, the odd Oystercatcher and some Red-breasted Merganser.

We travelled the island thoroughly and saw 63 species in the week, we looked in all the places that 'people' were saying they had seen things, but none of the rarities were found. (Cackling Goose and Green-winged Teal) Scoter and Slavonian Grebe of which there were almost daily sightings also eluded us. Eben the famous Otter at the Bunnahabain Distillery failed us, although we went a few times when the tides are allegedly most favourable.

Here's a few snaps of some of the things that dained to show themselves:
White-fronted Geese at Loch Gruinart,

 Barnacle Geese at Loch Gruinart,

 Stonechat,

 Two White-tailed Eagles at the Oa,

 Hooded Crow,

 Starlings,

 Ringed Plover at Loch Indaal,

 Greenshank at Loch Gruinart,

 Lapwing at Loch Gruinart,

 Little Egret at Loch Gruinart,

 Lapwings,

 Believe it or not that's a female Hen Harrier at Loch Gruinart,

 Chough at Ardnave Point,

 King of the Sheep,

 Rock Pipit at Loch Indaal,

 Red Deer on Jura,

 Great Northern Diver at Bunnahabain,

 Common Seal on its perch,

 Eider om Loch Indaal,

 Part of a flock of 30+ Chough at Ardnave,

 Whooper Swans on Loch Ardnave,

 Pintail at Loch Gruinart,

 Roe Deer at Loch Gruinart,

Scaup on Loch Indaal,

and Brown Hare at Loch Gruinart Hide Car Park

We still had a great time though, we can't all be on Shetland for the Tengmalm's Owl! Other birds of note without photos, were a group of Snipe on the rocks at Bruichladdich on Loch Indaal, a couple of Brent Geese seen near the same place a couple of days later, Sparrowhawk over our back garden in Bowmore, a White-tailed Eagle taking a Teal at Loch Gruinart (awesome) it all happened to quickly to get a picture or any video, a Peregrine trying the same the day after and failing! Black-guillemot in various places around the island, a Red-throated Diver off Jura.

We finished with a small pod of Common Dolphin from the ferry back to the mainland. All in all a great couple of weeks with 82 species seen in all.

Scotland Again - Cape Wrath and Bits and Pieces

This is the last post for this Scottish trip, but it won't be the last for Scotland this year as there is at least one more more wildlife based trip planned this year.
So on our 'Windy' Thursday explorations we added, Redshank and Greenshank to our list of birds,

 Stonechats were everywhere,

 and we came across Pink-footed Geese on a surprising number of occasions

 and another great sighting of Black-throated Diver was had.

 On the Friday the wind had dropped so after checking with John the Ferryman we drove north again and went for the ferry at 10:30. The 'ferry' only takes four people at a time and there were 15 of us, plus the mini-bus driver. While we were waiting we saw our first Sandwich Terns of the year, I didn't expect to see a Sandwich tern until we visit the Farnes in June.

 A Rock Pipit obliged us as well while we waited for John to row out and get the slightly larger boat,

 The crossing.....

Once all of us were assembled and after adding a Willow Warbler to the list, we boarded the bus for the 1 hour, 11 mile journey to Cape Wrath, where upon the weather decided to stop being nice and it rained the whole way and with 16 people in a bus the windows steamed up fairly quickly, but we did see some Red Deer and then some Whoopers in a small loch. Others on the bus saw some Red Grouse, but neither of us saw them. We eventually made it to the most North Westerly point of the UK and the rain stopped, hurrah! So we pose for a photo, where the next stop behind us would be Canada!

 Up on the point we saw thousands of Pink-foots heading to Greenland for the Summer, plus a few Redwing, Meadow Pipit, Fulmar, distant Gannet, Razorbill and Guillemot

 After an hour it was all back on the bus and the return journey, then as if on cue the rain started again! Only allowing a murky scenery shot along route,

Once back we drove up to Durness for a late lunch and a visit to Smoo Cave and waterfall.

 Then as the weather was now not very nice, wet and cold, we visited Cocoa Mountain, a brilliant chocolate shop at Balnakiel and had the best Hot Chocolate ever!!

We paid one last visit to the harbour at Kinlochbervie before going back to pack, the reward this time being another Red-throated Diver (in the rain of course!!)

 So finally on the way back home via Edinburgh, we stopped to see our faithful pair of Osprey, at first the nest looked deserted, but after a few minutes we weren't disappointed and we had about 10 minutes of decent views, a great birding end to a week in Scotland

Wester Ross - April 2016

This is part two of our Scottish 'tour' following on from Mull. After leaving the ferry at Oban, we headed north along the west coast of Scotland to our new home for a week at Aultbea overlooking Loch Ewe. The drive was great as we got further north the scenery just got better and better. We quickly fell in love with this part of Scotland.
As you can see the weather turned a tad cooler for our second week!

After a lot of driving the previous day, we decided to keep things simple on our first full day and decided to spend some time locally. Firstly we dropped down into the 'town' and drove around the edge of Loch Ewe just 2 minutes from our 'shack'.

We were rewarded with a Slavonian Grebe a little offshore, for the record:

This first of many visits to our also provided us with Great Northern Diver and Merganser. So a good start to the day. Our next stop was Laide Wood just a couple of miles up the road and the chance for us to stretch our legs a bit. The weather was good and we risked setting out without waterproofs and we got away with it! From the car park we dropped down onto a track that disappeared into the woods, we had only been walking a few minutes when we spotted a Goldcrest flitting in the young pine trees:

This was quickly followed by a Treecreeper. An excellent start to our walk. We walked on a short way and found a bench beautifully located by a stream, so it would have been rude not to stop for a coffee and wait to see what presented itself. We didn't have to wait long for a number of Lesser Redpoll to appear:

They kept us company while we had our coffee and were ready to carry on. We then had another surprise a Wood Warbler, what made it even better was that this was our first. Photographing it did prove difficult though.

We carried on exploring various trails and finding two small lochs one with a hide. We sat for a bit but apart from a Grey Heron nothing else was seen. For those of you who are Lord of the Rings fans, we did find an Ent!

The rest of our walk although lovely proved uneventful from a birding point of view, that is until we were almost back to the car, that is when a White-tailed Eagle swung into view:

One of the things we planned this week was to head further north and get the foot ferry over to Cape Wrath. When we got in I phoned the ferry and checked for the following day, all looked good, so up early the next morning to zoom north for about two and a half hours only to find that the wind had got up, the ferryman came down to check but decided not to go, that's life.
So we went for plan B and headed for Tarbet to see if we could get across to Handa Island and the sea bird colonies, alas this was cancelled too!

So plan C was brought into play, we meandered back the way we had come making some detours on the way. We did have a coffee at Tarbet looking across to Handa and were pleases to fine Red-throated Diver, Black Guillemot, Eider, Common Sandpiper, Rock Pipit, Shag and Fulmar.

We could now enjoy the scenery on the drive back and even found a great place for a very late lunch at Lochinver. The journey back did provide us with mixed weather, sunshine, sleet, snow and blizzards as you can see by this sheltering Buzzard, that Tina spotted:

Day 3 saw us exploring around Loch Ewe and finding out its WWII history, it was used as a start point for the Arctic Conveys to Russia, evidenced by the many old gun emplacements scattered around the shore and this memorial:

I should say at this point that we had given up on Cape Wrath and Handa Island for the holiday as strong winds were forecast the rest of the week, so very little chance of any ferries running. Next time and there will be a next time.

On with day 3, we completed the Diver trilogy today and added Black-throated Diver to the other two. Mergansers were to be seen in most places,

 and Greenshank popped up now and again.

 The Loch Ewe tour also added Merlin, Turnstone, Redshank and Ringed Plover to our Wester Ross list. Back at the shack we had Song Thrush and Robin coming up to our patio doors as well as Lesser Redpoll in our garden too.

We turned Day 4 into a National Trust day exploring the Gardens at the SNT Inverewe property at Poolewe on the southern shore of Loch Ewe, There's certainly a lot of Eweing going on!

The gardens were magnificent, we saw Bullfinch and Blackcap in the trees, this was a nice addition to our fortnight. I will digress from birding for a bit as the gardens are worthy of a few photos:

OK enough foliage! There is a hide in the estate that is accessible without paying to go into the property, so we went for lunch there. As the tide was out there wasn't a great deal to add, although we did see; Oystercatcher, Merganser, Redshank, Heron, Ringed Plover, Great Northern Diver and Common Sandpiper, so not bad really for a lunch stop.

Next day we went south and Loch Torridon, en route on a roadside Loch we found three Black-throated Divers, brilliant! We also had a look at Loch Maree, but this was uninhabited apart for a Goosander and some Mallard.

We drove along Loch Torridon all the way to Diabaig, this was a fantastic drive over mountains and moorland, absolutley brilliant, we stopped at the top to admire this view:

when two Snow Buntings surprised us, they had gone again before I could swap lenses. Never mind.
Taking our time we meandered back and stopped at the forestry visitor centre and walked from there down to a hide. We hadn't gone far when we spotted no less than 4 Ring Ouzels in a tree line, good views through the bins but sadly to far for the camera.

In the hide we had (familiar story) a late lunch, seeing our first Golden Plover of the trip in an adjacent field plus a few other bits and bobs but the weather wasn't looking great so we decided to head 'home'

So that was our first visit to Wester Ross and mighty good it was too! There will be a small third instalment to follow concerning a brief stop we made on the way to Edinburgh from here.

Wester Ross Birds:

Black Guillemot  ("Cepphus grylle")

Blackbird  ("Turdus merula")

Blackcap  ("Sylvia atricapilla")

Black-headed Gull  ("Chroicocephalus ridibundus")

Black-throated Diver  ("Gavia arctica")

Blue Tit  ("Cyanistes caeruleus")

Bullfinch  ("Pyrrhula pyrrhula")

Buzzard  ("Buteo buteo")

Chaffinch  ("Fringilla coelebs")

Coal Tit  ("Periparus ater")

Collared Dove  ("Streptopelia decaocto")

Common Gull  ("Larus canus")

Common Sandpiper  ("Actitis hypoleucos")

Cormorant  ("Phalacrocorax carbo")

Curlew  ("Numenius arquata")

Dunnock  ("Prunella modularis")

Gannet  ("Morus bassanus")

Goldcrest  ("Regulus regulus")

Golden Plover  ("Pluvialis apricaria")

Goldfinch  ("Carduelis carduelis")

Goosander  ("Mergus merganser")

Great Black-backed Gull  ("Larus marinus")

Great Northern Diver  ("Gavia immer")

Great Tit  ("Parus major")

Greenfinch  ("Chloris chloris")

Greenshank  ("Tringa nebularia")

Grey Heron  ("Ardea cinerea")

Greylag Goose  ("Anser anser")

Herring Gull  ("Larus argentatus")

Hooded Crow  ("Corvus cornix")

House Sparrow  ("Passer domesticus")

Kestrel  ("Falco tinnunculus")

Lapwing  ("Vanellus vanellus")

Lesser Black-backed Gull  ("Larus fuscus")

Lesser Redpoll  ("Carduelis cabaret")

Little Grebe  ("Tachybaptus ruficollis")

Mallard  ("Anas platyrhynchos")

Meadow Pipit  ("Anthus pratensis")

Oystercatcher  ("Haematopus ostralegus")

Pied Wagtail  ("Motacilla alba")

Raven  ("Corvus corax")

Red-breasted Merganser  ("Mergus serrator")

Redshank  ("Tringa totanus")

Ring Ouzel  ("Turdus torquatus")

Ringed Plover  ("Charadrius hiaticula")

Robin  ("Erithacus rubecula")

Rock Dove / Feral Pigeon  ("Columba livia")

Slavonian Grebe  ("Podiceps auritus")

Snow Bunting  ("Plectrophenax nivalis")

Song Thrush  ("Turdus philomelos")

Sparrowhawk  ("Accipiter nisus")

Starling  ("Sturnus vulgaris")

Treecreeper  ("Certhia familiaris")

Turnstone  ("Arenaria interpres")

Wheatear  ("Oenanthe oenanthe")

White-tailed Eagle  ("Haliaeetus albicilla")

Willow Warbler  ("Phylloscopus trochilus")

Wood Warbler  ("Phylloscopus sibilatrix")

Wren  ("Troglodytes troglodytes")