The Reality of Life

A story from The Raptor

This story came to me from the guys at Ardnamurchan Estate.  I have been keeping an eye on a buzzard's nest close by the office - some may recall my post last year when the buzzards moved nest to the junction by the main road, where they successfully raised two chicks, but they must have found it a bit noisy and this year moved back to their original nest site.

I had been watching the rebuild of the nest, then the female spending more time on the nest obviously incubating an egg or eggs!.    Well at least two as recently I had been watching a couple of little balls of fluff beginning to stretch and grow.

Now for the brutal reality of life in nature.  On Tuesday morning as I arrived at work I was greeted with looks of horror and comments of 'now I hope this doesn't upset you'... puzzled I asked what was ado!  Then the story reveals.

Only minutes before I arrived at work the guys had heard quite a disturbance in the air, birds of all sorts were circling and calling and as loud as they could.  A white tailed sea eagle was circling over the bay, it came in close enough to the buzzards nest to set the female buzzard up, this then caught the attention of a couple of passing gulls who also joined in the harassing of the eagle. However, the eagle persisted on its mission and kept circling closer and closer to the nest, then two ravens joined in the harassment closely followed by a couple of hoodies but no matter how many dives and attacks this band of birds made on the eagle it carried on eyeing up the nest and moving in closer and closer, I suppose all the time gauging the distance onto the nest and also if it could make a successful raid. The harassing continued unabated by these aerial combatants, all it seems in vain as the eagle eventually made its move and went into a dive, folding it's great wings back and at great speed went crashing into the trees and through the branches straight onto the buzzard's nest. The noise from the buzzard, the gulls, ravens and hoodies was at a crescendo. Just a second later the eagle emerged from the tree working its wings hard to gain height and get into the air and there held in its huge talons was a large limp payload, a pair of helpless buzzard chicks! A precision attack by a master predator and a hard earned meal for its young, for it too has young to feed.

The buzzards the mating season was over in an instant all the hard work in repairing the nest, the laying of eggs, the whole incubation period and the hours of hunting and feeding the next generation, gone in a second of majestic but brutal reality of life in nature.

Our tale however goes on. The following day I was sure I heard a high pitched squeal coming from the trees.  I moved closer and waited a while and then and a very fluffy white head popped up as an adult buzzard swooped into the nest carrying a mouse or a vole. One chick had survived this aerial attack, and now on its own and being the sole focus of both parents I should hope it continues its growth unmolested into adulthood.

I have to thank all my roving reports at the estate for relaying this story.  We will keep you updated on the remaining time our chick has on the nest.

The Raptor

An Ardnamurchan Beach

When we paddle along these beaches we tread where three great realms meet - land, sea and sky - their elements mixed by the breakers. Little wonder that there's something very special indeed about beaches.

This is Port Min, the soft, tender, delicate, smooth anchorage, a place which contrasts starkly with its adjacent Ardnamurchan coastline, where hard igneous rocks are exposed to the constant beat of North Atlantic rollers.

A Walk up a Burn

Sometimes, but not often, we drive out of the village without any idea of where we're going to walk - but an easy choice is to select one of the many small burns which drain western Ardnamurchan's hills and follow it to its source.  This one, called the Allt Loisgte, the burnt burn, drains the eastern slopes of Cathair Mhic Dhiarmaid. It flows under the Kilmory road, just below Braehouse cottage, and into the Achateny Water. It doesn't look very interesting from the road....

....but follow it upstream and it disappears into a beautiful and increasingly spectacular steep-sided glen, whose sides are covered in trees.

The sides of this gorge become so precipitate that it's impossible to scramble down to the burn, which descends in a series of waterfalls.

This is a place of thick mosses and, growing on the dead branches of the birch, big fungi. In early summer flowers like lesser celandines, violets, primroses and wood anemones manage to find a place to grow.

Above the gorge the burn seems to have shrunk, but much of it is now underground - though there is plenty of evidence that, in flood, it flows across the grass.

There comes a point where the trees can't survive exposure to the winter winds which blast up the Achateny Water's wide glen. The burn only appears at the surface in those places where it crosses a band of hard rock, then it disappears underground again.

About half way up the slope the burn is lost in a flat, boggy area, but its upper course can be seen at top left of the picture, where it descends rapidly from the ridge line.

Its source is this area of thick peat, in places over two metres deep, which clothes the summit of the ridge. It's like a gigantic sponge which steadily releases water into the headwaters of the burn, keeping it flowing in all but the longest spell of dry weather.

What's particularly satisfying about this walk is that, sitting on a rock near the burn's source, one can see its whole course laid out below. Right in the middle of the picture is the wooded gorge, while the Achateny Water, which drains distant Loch Mudle, runs along the bottom of the hill.

Corvid Wars

When a raven came visiting, drawn to something it had spotted along the edge of one of Hughie's abandoned pig enclosures, it was watched by....

....a pair of hooded crows which settled in a nearby tree to wait until....

....the raven took off, when they launched a noisy and sustained attack until they had driven it off.

There's constant aerial warfare over Ormsaigbeg's croft lands. The corvid species chase each other. The crows chase the buzzards, which are also chased by the gulls. The eagles are chased by everybody, including the oystercatchers and some ducks.

2016 Kilchoan Half Marathon

From our athletics correspondent...

The 2016 running of the Kilchoan Half Marathon and 10K races saw a bumper entry of 7 entrants, who came up specially to run this famous event on the endurance calendar. The runners set off at 11am from the pub and soon broke into three groups. Dom, Lucy, Katie & Lauren pushed on toward the half way mark of the lighthouse while Lucy and Annika made good progress towards the Sonachan, the halfway mark for the 10K. Angus decided that roads were too flat and took a detour straight up the side of Meall Sanna before looping back via the school house road. An hour in and Dom had already rounded the lighthouse and was heading from home having pulled out a strong lead, eventually finishing with a creditable time of 1hr 38. All the road runners made it back for the celebration photo with the magnificent cup and went straight into the pub to rehydrate. Angus turned up some time later but was disqualified for having run too far! It might not be the best organised or the biggest field but what we lack in scale we make up for in spectacular scenery, as you can see from the amazing footage shot by Hamza Yassin with his drone.

 

 

Many thanks to Chris Gane for the story and Hamza Yassin for the photography and video footage.