Thurso to Ullapool

Highlight today was this fabulous adult white-tailed eagle which flew over head at Stoer, just north of Lochinver. This is the first sea eagle I have seen on the Scottish mainland, most of the others have been on the Hebrides with a single sighting on Papa Westray, Orkney earlier this year.

It's a beautiful drive from Thurso to Ullapool and includes many of my favourite places such as Strathy Point, Bettyhill, Tongue, Durness and Inverpolly. Today I concentrated mainly on the north coast of Scotland because over the next few days I'll be staying in Inverpolly and will get plenty of time to see that area. 

Strathy point in Sutherland is a headland which can be good for cetaceans but not today for me. 

I was pleased to see these twite at Strathy Point.

Strathy Point is also a good spot for Scottish Primrose but it's over for the year now and I had to be content with these leaves.

Druim Chuibhe at Bettyhill (on the other side of the river) is a well known botanical site which I have visited several times over the years but today I had decided to spend my time further west so had to be content with some nice views as I drove past.

Tongue is another beautiful spot on this route with glorious sandy beaches. I first camped here nearly 40 years ago.

Today I was heading for Faraid Head at Durness because botanically it's an interesting place but it also gave me the opportunity to once again scan the sea for cetaceans and once again fail to see any. There's a theme developing here. 

However the short turf of the sandy grassland on the headland is great for flowers, with masses of gentians just coming into flower. This is autumn gentian with the caylx lobes well seperated. Virtually all of the autumn gentians I saw today were of the white northern subspecies septentrionalis which is endemic to the UK and mainly northern Scotland.

And this is field gentian with the caylx lobes overlapping.

Faraid Head.

Eyebright is a common plant in the short turf. There are so many species of eyebright that it wouldn't surprise me if Faraid Head had it's own unique species but if this is it then the identification is way beyond my skills.

Frog orchid and common twayblade.

Grass of Parnassus.

Balnakeil Bay on the western side of Faraid Head.

Faraid Head.