More from around Grantown

 We visited Loch Garten mainly to see the Osprey, but also to have a look at the cameras on the Eagle nest. A bonus was a camera on a Goshawk nest. We did see an Osprey return to the nest from the visitor centre:

As you can see it's a fair distance away, but still awesome. We had hoped to see Crested Tits as well, they eluded us when we visited in February and they did so again. Having spoken to one of the RSPB volunteers about it, he said that at this time of year (June) they tend to stay in their territories and don't venture to the feeders at the visitor centre very often.... hey ho, next time!

Plenty of other birds around the visitor centre though:

Siskin,

Chaffinch,

and Treecreeper

A Spotted Flycatcher was seen in the woodland walk, plus all the common tits. 

Next stop was a visit to our favourite Ospreys a bit further down the A9:

We were then going to use the lovely hide at Loch Insh for lunch but sadly some *!*!* has recently burnt it down. 

On the drive home, we went the long way around, over the Lecht, through Braemar and over Glenshee. We were rewarded with this at the Lecht:

A White-tailed Eagle, I'm guessing this is one of the pair nesting at Loch Garten.

Followed by two Merlin Helicopters flying through the valley underneath the Eagle!

Finally from Braemar we drove the Old Military Road to the the base of Glenshee and came across a Curlew,

with a youngster, hiding in the grass (honest!)

That'll do for a summary of the trip.

Around Grantown on Spey

 Once we recovered from the dreaded Covid we booked a couple of nights away in Grantown, not quite the same as Lesvos, but there were a couple of things we wanted to do in the area. Firstly was to see the Polar Bear Cub at the Highland Wildlife Park:

Mission accomplished!

In addition to the captive wildlife, there were some birds about:

Lapwing,

Willow Warbler,

and Barnacle Geese.

a Redshank was also seen on the muddy pools near the Tiger enclosure. (rubbish photo, so not posted!)

So other photos from the park:

That'll do for this post.... another Grantown post to follow!

It's been a while again!

 With our daughters wedding, catching covid and lots of other things going on, I've had very little time to sort out our photos and do any posts here. Yesterday I managed to go through a months worth of photos, not just wildlife a lot of other stuff too.

I'll start with a few photos from the garden, whilst we were isolating in the second week of June. We should have been going to Lesvos, but went down with covid 4 days before we were due to go and took 11 days before we were clear. We were so looking forward to it, two weeks of Greek food and birding too, it would have been fantastic. Hey ho!

So back to the garden; A family of Blue tits stayed with us for a quite a while:

There's alwats a Woodpigen about and

we had quite a few Starlings visit.

In addition we had Siskin, Coal Tit and House Sparrow. In addition there was always the ever present Lesser Black-backed Gulls, Rook, Jackdaw, Crow and Magpie flying around and the occasional Swifts too!

There are more posts to come of post covid afternoons out.

A bit of Birding on the Isle of Arran

 We have recently returned from a week on the Isle of Arran. We managed a few days birding, as we had other things planned and also the weather intervened. Also for the last bit there is a lack of photos as my camera started doing weird things and over exposing everything I took. I have been on to Nikon support but they can't come up with a reason why it's doing what it is, so they want me to send the camera in!

Anyway here are the edited highlights; I'm going to start with a Red Squirrel fest at Brodick Castle, there were at least five seen from the Squirrel hide:

A few birds seen there too:

Robin,

Chaffinch,

Siskin,

Pheasant

and Coal Tit

as well as Blue and Great Tits of course.

We saw Male Hen Harriers on a number of occasions, one even flewpast the back garden of the cottage we were staying in, didn't have the camera handy for that one, but did get some shots up on 'the String'

Elsewhere, there were lots of Ringed Plover about,

nesting Common Gulls,

Herons,

Herring Gulls,

Black Guillemots,

Song Thrush,

a Whimbrel,

Oystercatchers,

Turnstone,

Nesting Oystrercatchers,

Common Gull again,

and Rock Pipit.

We saw loads more but by now my Camera had packed up completely. Our first distant Cuckoos of the year, Wheatear, Sedge Warbler, Whitethroat, Meadow Pipits, Swallows, House Martin, Red-breasted Merganser, Shelduck, Eider, Common Sandpiper and Hooded Crow, plus all the other garden birds of course.