The Things You See

From The Raptor:

I had a visitor from the East (not the Far East, just Dundee). We went out and about for a couple for days visiting the local area and I spent a lot of time pointing and talking - but what's new?  Here are a few of the things (some strange) that we saw on our touring.

A short walk took us deep into Kilchoan village where who can guess what we saw going on down on the croft - the goat man of Ormsaigbeg (Tom) was out and about exercising his three lovely goats.  The larger one was due to give birth very soon, but see the story on Tom's blog, here.

Around a few more corners this amazing sight met us which immediately reminded me of the movie 'Gorillas in the Mist'.  It was in fact two very diligent crofters doing what all good crofters do and keeping a very close eye on the 'burning', a yearly procedure carried out to help eradicate badly overgrown areas and to allow new grasses to take hold to provide better grazing for the hill sheep.

Then off to the lighthouse.  We walked from Achosnish as it was a lovely day, and as this rainbow appeared we walked a bit faster but the pot had gone by the time we go there.

We did however see this beautiful Song Thrush.  Its good to see them in larger numbers as the spring approaches (so some say).

We then came across this windswept highlander mum and her new born calf.  Then we went on to the shore where we spotted quite a few Little Plovers running about, another returnee for the coming summer.

On our way back to the car we found that these beautiful birds had arrived on Grigadale Loch, Whooper Swans on their way north for the summer breeding in Iceland and Greenland, (thanks to Kilchoan Early Bird for the tip-off).  We were told the following day that there had been 25 on Loch Shiel at Moss, but they were gone by the time we visited.

 I decided to look out my passport and take my visitor to the edge of the known universe or at least the Ardnamurchan peninsula, so we packed a lunch and went off east. We stopped in out tracks even before we got as far as Glenborrodale Castle to watch this cheeky chappy lazing about off shore enjoying the sun, and to our delight he alighted onto the only rock poking out of the water....

....and in a few short seconds took to the air in a dive that would put Tom Daley to shame.

We arrived at our destination, Castle Tioram, where we were amazed at the numbers of bird life out on the water.  There were more Curlews than we could count, of course many many gulls, and we got sightings of Wigeon and a beautiful duck, the Golden Eye. We returned home quite happy and then to close the day at Camas nan Gaell we stopped to see the sun give us beautiful end to the day.

So if there is a morale to this story it is 'always take your camera with you and snap everything you see, as you may never see it again'.

Many thanks to the Raptor, who has made good use of his super new camera.