The Wildlife of a Lonely Beach

When we visit remote beaches like those just to the west of the Cat's Face we spend a great deal of our time....

....immersing ourselves in the peace of the place, listening to the wash of the waves, and wandering around taking pictures. It was Rachael who first saw an otter, just off the beach, and it was she too who noticed....

....in the furthest bay, the one just below the Cat's Face cliff, the largest flock of shags that we have ever seen. We counted over fifty but, since many of them kept diving, this number is certainly an underestimate.

More were on a low island, at the northern end, and from this photograph it is possible to see that many of the birds are juveniles. So this is some sort of shag nursery, from which....

....the adults kept flying away, presumably to catch fish for their young.

The numbers of shags in the Sound of Mull seems to us to have been falling but this huge collection suggest that they are congregating in places where they are least likely to be disturbed and where the fishing remains reasonably good.

The same island is always a good place for seals and these, too, seemed to be a mixture of young and old. They were at the opposite end of the island from the shags and, from their blubbery fatness, they too seem to be thriving.

In all, we counted over twenty-five of them, all basking in the sun. The colours of the adults seemed to vary considerably. The young are pale.