Scotland - part 2

Image by Sebastian Niedlich (Grabthar) via Flickr

I bade a sad goodbye to Grantown and made the slower than expected drive over to Oban, where I was to spend the night in the rather less than glamorous (but perfectly adequate) Oban Backpackers. The next day I took the ferry journey over to Mull for a day of birdwatching with Island Encounter. I had been on a similar trip two years ago with a rival firm and Yorkshireman David, who was brilliant, but I wanted to try the opposition. I wasn't disappointed. Richard was, I was pleased to discover, another Yorkshireman (why are there so many on Mull?! they weren't the only Yorkshire accents I picked up that day) but with a slightly less gruff manner than David and just as much knowledge injected with a good bit if humour.

We started off looking for white-tailed sea eagles, without any joy, though I was delighted to see a male marsh harrier, which I've never seen before as well as some little meadow pipits darting in and out of the hedges.

We moved onto the shore and were rewarded with cormorants, curlews, eiders, gannets, canada and greylag geese, an abundance of grey herons (spotted constantly throughout the day), blackheaded, common and herring gulls, kittiwakes, oystercatches, ringed plovers and shags.
We stopped to watch some seals playing just a little way from the shore.

Driving a little further on Richard stopped the car suddenly and we were rewarded with my only ever sighting of a couple of red deer. A fawn staring staring straight at us and his/her mother, rump towards us but neck arched all the way round so as to keep us in her sights.

We did manage to spot what I had come to see - but only right on the horizon. A pair of golden eagles soaring gracefully above the mountains disappearing in and out of the drizzly fog.

The highlights of the day came in the afternoon. We stopped the car to look for otters and it wasn't long before we were rewarded. A single otter, just metres away from the shore and the sun glistening on his wet fur, dived and dipped in and out of the water and emerged with a fish. He was so close I could hear him eating in the surrounding silence.

We watched him for a bit before heading on to another good place for sighting sea eagles. It was raining and Richard started scanning the trees where they often sit. And sure enough, there they were, a male and a female sitting a few trees apart, looking composed and haughty as the drizzle streamed off their feathers. The day was ended on a high after I spotted another of the eagles (or possibly one of the pair) flying quite close overhead with some sort of animal in its talons.

Funnily enough it was back on the mainland in beautiful Plockton two days later where I got to see a golden eagle up close. I went out on a seal trip with the jovial Calum and got a great view of the colonies we had come to see. But then, just as we looked to the horizon...was that a gull...a big gull? No, as it flew overhead we got to see the golden eagle in all its glory.

What a trip...and coming up shortly: South Africa!

Scotland: part 1

Image: the-owl-barn.com

Imagine looking through your binoculars at a red squirrel only to see a Great Spotted Woodpecker poke its head out from behind the squirrel. Two beasties I've never seen in one sighting! I was up in Scotland visiting the Osprey Centre near Aviemore in the Cairngorms.

I had been lucky to arrive just in time to see an osprey sitting on a tree at the far end of the reserve. It was there for 5 mins, long enough to get a good look through the telescope, before it rose up and soared over the building, giving us an even more magnificent view. 

The centre (closed now for winter) is a fantastic place to sit and watch literally dozens of different breeds of birds (and animals) feasting on the feeders. I suppose you could argue (and dedicated twitchers no doubt will) that it is a bit of a zoo, given that the birds are there for the feeders. But it is a fantastic place to see all sorts of birds in one go. As well as the osprey, red squirrel and woodpeckers I also saw greenfinches, chaffinches, coal tits, blue tits, great tits and robins. 

I learnt how to identify the different genders of great spotted woodpecker; the juvenile has a red cap on its head, the male has a red patch on the back of its head and - as usual - the female is a little more drab with no red patch.

I spent three days staying in the Grant Arms in Grantown-on-Spey, "the wildlife hotel", home to the Birdwatching and Wildlife Club. The club organises walks and tours and so on from the hotel, some you can do on foot from the hotel itself. I set off on a couple of hour hike with the club to the woods behind Grantown, where red squirrels are in abundance. The birds were in short supply that day unfortunately but the walk is beautiful and comes out at the maginificent River Spey. 

Taking advantage of the decent weather, having arrived - and left - just before the floods, I also spent an afternoon heading up to RSPB reserve at Udale Bay. The drive up there is beautiful, with sweeping views of the Cromarty Firth. The reserve ittself is 'blink and you could miss it'. One hide overlooking wetlands. But there is certainly no shortage of birds from oystercatchers, curlew and plover to teals and mallards. 

Further round the coast, a gorgeous spot to stop for tea and cake is Cromarty. From there it's short drive to Chanonry Point, the best spot in the area for dolphins apparently. I was unlucky that day - but hey, you can't have everything.