The Raptor's willingness to brave anything the weather can throw at us, including subjecting Callan Dubh to today's snow showers, 3C temperatures, and a biting northerly wind, does pay off.
For example, yesterday, while walking along the shore near Mingary Castle, he spotted this bird which, to the uninitiated, might look like a curlew, but the Raptor instantly recognised it as....
....a whimbrel, the first he's seen here. The differences are minor, the most obvious being that the curlew is larger, and the whimbrel has two dark lines around and over its eye.
Whimbrels are birds of passage, moving between their winter feeding grounds in southern Africa and their summer breeding grounds to the north of us - they nest on the Isle of Lewis and on the Orkney and Shetland Islands.
Many thanks to the Raptor for the photos.
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