West Highlands, 2022 – 3

Tags

Ben Nevis, Caledonian MacBrayne, Corran ferry, Devil's toenails, Gleann Gael, grey seal, gryphea, Isle of Mull, Kingairloch, Loch Aline, Loch Linnhe, Loch Uisge, Lochaline, Lochaline Mine, Morvern, otter, pine marten, red deer, red-breasted merganser, sika deer, Sound of Mull, stonechat, whinchat

Tuesday, 13th September. Today, having passed through Fort William, we went down the eastern side of Loch Linnhe (pronounced ‘Linnie’) to its narrows, where we crossed the loch by the Corran ferry, enjoying the view of the lighthouse on the other side.

After the narrows the sea loch is much wider. We followed it southwards.

Looking back

Looking forward

Red-breasted merganser

Common seal ‘banana-ing’

Distant red deer

At one stop along the loch I was pleased to have my 2007 Open University geology revised. I had never realised that Ben Nevis was an extinct volcano.

We left the Linnhe at one point to visit a small lochan (that’s tautologous) with a very long name in Gallic.

Whinchat and stonechat by the lochan

Back beside the Linnhe, I was delighted to see a seal come in to cavort in the rocks and weed. It was some way away, and rather difficult to photograph, but these are my two best pictures.

Our packed lunch was taken at Kingairloch,

from where we made our way inland on the Morvern peninsula to Lochaline, on the Sound of Mull. We had on the way passed Loch Whisky and Gleann Gael. [Linguistic note!: I wrote ‘Whisky’ in my notebook, because that’s what I thought I was being was told, being assured that it was its real name, and that ‘whisky’ means ‘water’ in Gallic. I was being teased to a certain extent. On the map I find it is spelt ‘Loch Uisge’. And ‘uisge’ does indeed mean water, ‘uisge beatha’, the water of life, being the Gallic for ‘whisky’.]

Distant sika deer, and sheep

Isle of Mull behind the ferry

We walked away from the Sound, and made our way a short distance along Loch Aline off it, past a fascinating sand mine and its works.

There was some waste sand lying around. On picking it up we could see and feel just how very white, fine and soft it was, quite unlike any I had encountered on a beach.

I would love to have had a visit round the works, not to mention the mine itself!

David and Jon (hidden behind his telescope), look at the storage

Conveyor belts

Sand just about to be dumped onto a conveyor belt

We walked on.

Tern of some sort being photobombed from the front by a young gull

I then got absorbed into the next activity and totally forgot to take any photos of it. There were literally hundreds of ‘devil’s toenails’ on the beach. David collected several. Devil’s toenails are fossils of bivalves, gryphea, about two inches, 5 centimetres, long. And here’s a (copyright-free) picture of one found on the internet..

Time to go home the way we came.

This evening a pine marten visited even before our meal, so it was possible to get some semi-daylight pictures through the glass.

Clearly not worried by us, as long as we stayed we we were. We could even move around.

West Highlands, 2022 – 1

Tags

Battle of Mulroy, butterwort, campanula, Commando Memorial, dipper, Eas Chia-aig Falls, Glen Roy, Glencoe, Glenloy, Gloucester old spot, grass of Parnassus, Jacobite, Loch Arkaig, Loch Linnhe, lungwort, map fungus, osprey, Parallel Roads, pine marten, River Turret, Round-leaved sundew, sedge fly, shieling, sika deer, Spean Bridge, stonechat, wagtail, waxcap fungus, wood tiger caterpillar, yellow saxifrage

Saturday, 10th to Sunday, 18th September. I stayed at Glenloy Lodge, our accommodation hosts, Jon and Angela, being our wildlife hosts also. Sadly, they are giving up at the end of the year.

In this map, the Isle of Skye is top left, that of Mull bottom left, Loch Ness top right, and Fort William somewhat to the right of the middle, at the head of the narrower part of Loch Linnhe. Glenloy is just a few miles due north of Fort William. Marked up are all the places we visited in the 556 miles we did in the week, except that we went a little off the map beyond Loch Ness once. Clicking/tapping on the map may enlarge it.

I had, reluctantly but due to several uncertainties about rail travel (and reckoning that I couldn’t actually prevent the plane from flying, whereas I could prevent my car from burning up fuel), flown to Glasgow from Bristol, and then taken a scheduled bus service from the city to Fort William. I had planned to listen to a number of podcasts I had downloaded during that last, three-hour, part of the journey, but in the event was so taken by the beautiful scenery that I just looked out of the window all the time. It was very sunny, and I didn’t think I would be able to take any useful photos because of reflections. But, frustrated all along Loch Lomond, I couldn’t resist any longer, and grabbed my phone to take a few of Glencoe. This is the most successful.

Those geography lessons about glacial U-shaped valleys kept coming to mind.

Jon met me at the bus station, and told me that there was just one other guest, David. It was not long before we had our meal, after which was the evening ritual of looking out, from the comfort of the sun lounge, for the pine martens who came to enjoy the peanuts and peanut-buttered bread put out for them. So strokeable – though perhaps not with those teeth. As long as we stayed indoors they were not fazed by our presence.

Before breakfast on Sunday, we were summoned to see what, if anything, had been attracted to the moth trap overnight. The answer was no moth, but a couple of sedge flies.

Each day, once we had set off at about 9.30, we were out until 6.00. This day, led by Jon, our first stop was in Glen Roy, famed among other things for its ‘Parallel Roads‘, mythically caused by giants racing in competition along the hillsides, but in fact caused by the shorelines of a retreating lake, which finally disappeared when a glacier blocking it melted.

We were meant to be looking for wildlife, but this is the first creature that caught my eye.

Gloucester Old Spot

These sika deer were a very long way away. I could not see them with the naked eye.

Young stonechat, waxcap fungus, grass of Parnassus (shame I took only this out-of-focus photo), yellow saxifrage

The Parallel Roads can be seen here.

These black-faced sheep distracted me. We saw hundreds of them every day.

Here the Parallel Roads can be seen, along with another geological feature, the river terraces of loose deposits left behind as the River Roy retreated. The little houses are shielings, summer accommodation once used by those tending animals, and their families.

The River Turret flows into Glen Roy. You need to cross this very attractive bridge to continue up the latter.

Two carnivorous plants, round-leaved sundew and butterwort

Campanula and friend

Somewhere in here is a dragonfly

Looking back down Glen Roy

The shieling children did not escape schooling in the summer. This is where they went for it.

Wood tiger moth caterpillar

We turned back a way. Views up and down the glen from our lunch spot.

Before leaving the glen entirely, and having seen a couple of exciting golden eagles, impossible to photograph, we saw two old monuments, and at Spean Bridge a modern one.

Said locally to be a communion table used by the Roman Catholic populations after the Jacobite rebellions. Communion cup carved much more recently.

Info on the Battle of Mulroy here.

This memorial to the Commandos, who trained in this area, was inaugurated by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 1952. I was to learn much more of this later in the week.

We moved on via the Mucomir Power Station on the River Lochy (which afforded no interesting photos) to the Eas Chia-aig Falls, where the the lower pool is known as the Witches’ Cauldron.

Near there we saw some map fungus and some lungwort.

On to Loch Arkaig, where we took a short walk. The light was not good, and we just made it back to the car in time before it started raining.

Wagtails of various kinds

Very distant adult and juvenile dippers

Osprey. It really does have a head.

The evening’s pine marten

I am very conscious that one of the readers of this blog used to live right by Glen Roy. He will no doubt be correcting any errors I have made!

Andalucia 10

Tags

Acebuche, Andalucia, Andalusia, azure-winged magpie, black-winged stilt, Blue rock thrush, Cattle egret, cinereous vulture, cormorant, Donana National Park, Eagle owl, Egyptian vulture, El Rocio, Eurasian black vulture, grey heron, greylag goose, griffon vulture, Iberian great grey shrike, Iberian magpie, Imperial eagle, Jandula, lapwing, littel egret, Naturetrek, Red-legged partridge, rock pipit, Sardinian warbler, Sierra Morena, spoonbill, starling, stonechat, White stork

Birds in Andalucia.  Look, I’m not very good with bird identification, but I do know that eagles tend to soar.  So when Simon said, incredibly excitedly, ‘There’s an imperial eagle on that post’, I quickly zoomed in on it and took this. I was not alone.  And not alone to realise, on examining the photo enlarged on the camera screen, that ‘that’ post’ was not that post!  What Simon meant was this – perhaps half a mile away.   When you go on a Naturetrek trip, they provide you in advance with a checklist of all the creatures you may see, with a column for each day.  There are always hundreds of species of birds on this list, and when we’re out I am in such awe as I hear naturalists/guides (and others) crying’, ‘That was the call of an X’, ‘There’s a Y.’  ‘Where, where?’ we all say, and they all do their darndest to help you see the creature.  I’m probably about average in being able to pick something out visually, no better, and am certainly poor on birdsong.  At the end of each day we gather together – nothing compulsory about it – and go through the list.  Of those seen or heard by someone, I will have seen perhaps a third to a half, the bigger the bird the more likely I am to have seen it.  I will have managed to take a photo of very few indeed. Here’s what I did get, with their identifications to the best of my recollection, (totally subject to correction, please).  Firstly in the Coto Doñana.

Original identification corrected to female or first-year male stonechat (Ack. BL)

Iberian great grey shrike

Stonechat

???

Cattle egrets living up to their name

And why not  take a bunch of starlings?  Especially when they are beautiful Spotless starlings, with wonderful glossy coats (though ordinary ones are pretty wonderful too!)

Griffon vultures

Griffon vultures

Best I could do to get a griffin vulture in flight

Easier to take this

We had driven a great loop and were now nearer to (but not very near) the Imperial eagle.  Only about 4500 left in the world

And then Simon spotted another, incredibly far away, and I’ve magnified this many times, but the nest can be seen in silhouette, and the eagle in a direct line with it, on the right.  Two Imperial eagles in view at the same time!

Almost as exciting to the leaders were a total of 6 Egyptian vultures coming in to two trees.

White storks and a heat haze

More cattle egrets doing their thing. To quote Wikipedia, ” It was originally native to parts of Southern Spain and Portugal, tropical and subtropical Africa and humid tropical and subtropical Asia. In the end of the 19th century it began expanding its range into southern Africa, first breeding in the Cape Province in 1908. Cattle egrets were first sighted in the Americas on the boundary of Guiana and Suriname in 1877, having apparently flown across the Atlantic Ocean. It was not until the 1930s that the species is thought to have become established in that area.”

We were taken to a tiny patch of the wetlands that was still wet.  I would have expected that there would have been vast concentrations of waders there.  There were not.  In addition to these Little egrets (I think) and lapwing/black-winged stilts (which, or something else?) we saw spoonbill and other species further away.

Greylag geese, on the ‘lagoon’ at El Rocío

Then at our picnic spot at El Acebuche, I managed at last to see an Iberian (or azure-winged) magpie.  I had heard them mentioned a few times, but this was the first time I had properly seen the beautiful creature, rather smaller than the common ones (and there were plenty of those around).   A few new birds (in terms of photographic opportunities) in the Sierra Morena. We saw a fairly rare Cinereous (a.k.a. Eurasian black) vulture over our picnic stop by the Jandula dam, but sadly this is not one, but a griffon vulture. (Identification BL)

Rock pipits at the dam

There is a Blue rock thrush in this picture, also at the dam.  Half way up the slope there is a bit sticking out.  The bird is not that bit. The bird is the bit sitting on that bit!

Two red-legged partridges. Some colleagues went out for a short early evening birdwatching trip on the second evening in the mountains, and came back saying they had seen an Eagle owl.  We all went to the spot the next day, and this is where we were searching.  (Well, the rock face was much bigger than this actually.)  A third of the way down, and a quarter of the way in from the left there is this. And within that there is this.  The Eagle owl is in one of these holes. See it?  No I don’t either.  Yeah, right, we’ll believe you Simon!

 

Several birds joined us at our last picnic spot, including this grey heron, which flew gracefully towards us after a while.  And then a troop (is that the word?) of Iberian magpies arrived at the same spot, and gradually made their way towards us, taking over the picnic tables as we left them. (Actually, the collective word for magpies is a murder, or a charm, or a congregation or a gulp. Take your pick.)

If it’s one for sorrow and two for joy, what do 14 magpies signify? (BL suggests for two secrets never to be told!)

At the spot where we had seen the big fish, a kingfisher swooped along the river and under the bridge – no photo sadly – and these cormorants stood for a while and then took off. Next (and last) post: felines!

 

Greylake Nature Reserve

Tags

coot, fieldfare, gadwall, greta white egret, Greylake, Ham Wall, hare, lapwing, mink, otter, redwing, RSPB, shoveler, snipe, Somerset Wildlife Trust, sparrowhawk, stonechat, swan, teal, wetlands, wigeon

Greylake Nature Reserve, owned by the RSPB.  I’d visited it just once before, and that only briefly. The prospect of a guided tour with birding experts, set up by the Somerset Wildlife Trust, and led by an RSPB volunteer, was too good to miss, so this was my third outdoor outing this week in near freezing temperatures.The briefing told us that the land had been in cultivation until 2003, when it was bought by the RSPB and converted into wetland for wildlife.  We would make our way to the main hide, where we would spend about half our time, and then walk around those parts accessible to the public.  Most of the area was kept behind electric fencing for the tranquillity of the birds and animals.  It was good to come at all times of the year, but this season was the best time because of the thousands of different birds over-wintering there.

On the way to the hide, I managed to get an indifferent picture of a fieldfare.

Once at the hide, we had this general view ahead of us.Looking round, and closing in a little with binoculars and camera, here are other aspects.

Wigeon, shovelers and coot

Wigeon, shoveler, coot and gadwall

Experienced birders were soon exclaiming at this clump, just 20 metres or so from us.A pair of teal can be seen easily, especially the male.  But are there really snipe there? And four?In due course I managed to find three, and indeed once you knew that they were there, it was even possible to pick the nearest one out with the naked eye, they were so close.  But what wonderful camouflage!  They didn’t move the whole of the time we were there.

 

It was not possible to get photos of all the species we saw, but here are some. (If birder readers wish to comment with further names, or corrections to any of these photos, above and below, please feel free!)

Shovelers, the male’s bill demonstrating just why they bear that name. The female has the same bill, but that is hidden here.

 

I just love lapwings, (also known as peewits) for their green iridescence, their cheeky crest, their wonderful courtship flight, their flappy way of flying (I call them flapwings).  This one all alone entertained us close to the hide for ages.

And as at Ham Wall, there was a Great white egret in the distance.

 

Three in fact. and here is one of the others flying around

 

Not long after leaving the hide, and keeping to the established path, we were shown by one of the RSPB volunteers, to the right of the path, some otter poo and some mink poo, the former more welcome than the latter.  The otter spraint was on a well-established otter path.To the left, the other part of the otter path could be seen.We were pleased then to see crowds and crowds of lapwing flying around, as if there had been a signal to the thousands in the area all to rise up at once. Here are just a few of them.Swans have no need to fear humans, and they know it. This one made for an easy photo, just a very few metres away from where we were walking.A distant view of another great white egret.Evidence of a recent hare boxing match.And of a sparrowhawk kill.We hoped to see more small birds, and indeed we did see redwing, and stonechat, but I couldn’t get photos.  We went on to a viewpoint:But few wetland birds were favouring this area of the reserve. Perhaps, along with the small birds, they were favouring the more sheltered areas on this chilly day.  But I, usually spending far too much of my life in front of a computer, had really enjoyed my three outdoors outings this week.  I must do it more often, and certainly return to Greylake at other seasons.

Return to Aigas 6

Tags

Aigas House, Aigas Quarry, bog bean, bog cotton, common frog, four spotted chaser, Glen Affric, Glen Cannich, Glen Strathfarrar, golden retriever, Lord Tweedmouth, oystercatcher, Plodda Falls, red deer, sandpiper, spotted heath orchid, stonechat

Tuesday dawned sunny and bright, and so it continued until mid-morning. (But that was it for the week.)  Today was spent going up and down Glen Cannich and Glen Affric.

Four spotted chaser dragonfly

Bog bean

Bog cotton

Spotted heath orchid

The sun abandoned us at this point.

Common sandpiper

We saw enormous numbers of red deer today, sometimes in huge herds.

Stonechat

Oystercatcher

Lunch was spent in a howling and rainy gale, (and in my case inside our vehicle!) so I couldn’t get any decent shots of the dam where we had it. Fortunately the wind and rain dropped at about the time we were to set off again. On the way to Plodda Falls we saw this curiosity, a tribute to the man who ‘invented’ the golden retriever.

The Falls were not for those with vertigo!

Just to be clear, we are looking down from the platform at this point

Then we walked about halfway down,  and I took this…

… and this.

But I wanted to take the lot, so I set my camera to panoramic.  But it will only do vertical or horizontal, so I had to twist my head and take a skewed vertical picture, if you see what I mean.

On the way back to Aigas House, we called in on Aigas Quarry, hoping to see a peregrine falcon’s nest.  We didn’t, but I was able to enjoy the geology and some more wild flowers.  The stone is micaceous schist, and was used for building one of the many hydro-electricity dams along the glen. (Did you know that a glen is a valley formed by river action and a strath is a valley formed by glacier action?  I didn’t either.  Glen Strathfarrar clearly has a problem with its identity!)

Someone came across this tiny frog, barely an inch (2.5 cm) long.

(It will be a couple of days or so before the remaining two posts in this series appear.)