May

Plenty of stuff to see now that most of the migrants are in but we still started the day with some of the regulars - Crossbill, Chaffinch, Stonechat etc. A single Golden Plover was displaying over the loch so there must be more birds there somewhere. A Common Whitethroat was singing at the top of a tree while we looked for Otter.

 There are still plenty of GN Diver around the loch but this one has a punky hair-do!

Cracking views of the WT Eagles but I was a bit slow with the camera.

Yet another Northern Wheatear...

...a Blackcap heard singing, 5 Lesser Redpoll and plenty of Rock Pipit.

There are quite a few White Wagtail (Pied Wagtail is a subspecies of this bird) hanging around the beaches at the moment.

At our last stop of the day we had a single Twite, a couple of Mountain Hare and 10 Whimbrel.

End of April

I'm a little bit behind with the blog but I'll catch up soon. A few snaps from the end of April when Rick T kindly took me out (Cheers, mate). Common Sandpiper doing some wing stretching.

We got cracking view of a Golden Eagle being mobbed by a Raven.

The biggest gull in the world - Great Black-backed Gull.

I'm not seeing that many Twite at the moment so it was nice to see this one.

A Wren was singing in a bush and it was kind enough to pose for a few snaps too.

This won't be the last picture of Northern Wheatear!

My PWC ended up with 92 species and 115 points. I was top of the Coastal Scotland league for March but I won't hold on to that.

Moving on

Another hot and sunny day with the temperatures reaching 20C in the morning! We managed to get distant views of Common Scoter and my first Whimbrel of the season as we headed towards WT Eagle country. A 3 year old WT Eagle was seen sitting in a tree while a Yellowhammer was singing close by. A bit of a search and we managed to find the 'little bit of bread and no cheeeeese' songster. An adult WT Eagle was found perched in another tree not far from the first bird.

An Otter was found but with the tide fully out this one spent more time hunting under the seaweed on the rocks than in the water. We had to move to a better position to get some cracking views. Four Whimbrel were seen feeding along the shore so it wasn't difficult to get good views of those.

There are plenty of Raven flying around, displaying and just being noisy.

Lots of Swallows around but they are still fairly localised at the moment but the Northern Wheatears are just everywhere.

The Tawny Owl was roosting in the barn but you can't look in on him every day - once a week is enough.

It was still quite warm when we had lunch so we were lucky to find this Adder.

We had seen the Golden Eagle on the way to lunch so it was onwards and upwards after that. You have to be careful where you park next to the breeding Lapwings as you don't want them leaving the eggs unattended.

Four Mountain Hares were seen near the beach with most of them in their summer coats now this was the palest one on show.

There were only 23 Golden Plover on show as the rest of the flock has moved on.

It the same situation with these Turnstones - the summer plumage is there and it won't be long before they move on to Iceland.