Hobbies at Oswestry

Photo: Hobby © Roland Neumann.

Working near Oswestry today and a rather dull morning was enlivened by a family party of hobbies which flew right overhead, no more than perhaps 15m above me. They were playing and calling, twisting around in the sky chasing each other. They didn't just go over, they stayed with me for three or four minutes circling around and giving me one of my greatest ever hobby experiences before disappearing over a nearby woodland. I didn't have my camera with me which was initially disappointing but perhaps it was just as well, because I could fully concentrate on the unfolding experience without watching it through a view finder and worrying about the next photo. 

Coneheads and Maidenhair at Arnside

Arnside Knott is one of our favourite walks, with views that just seem to get better and better, looking over the Kent estuary, Morecambe bay and the Lake District. The outward leg starts off as a coastal walk from Arnside and the return goes over the Knott before dropping back down into the town. It's one of the top spots in Lancashire for wildlife, which includes butterflies such as high brown fritillary, northern brown argus and Scotch Argus and it's very rich botanically with plants such as fly orchid, dark-red helleborine, maidenhair fern and Teesdale violet.

A few years ago I found a population of short-winged coneheads crickets on the saltmarsh at White Creek. The only other place I have seen these insects in north west England is at Marshside, Southport.

Ainsdale Beach

This wonderful adult male wheatear on Ainsdale beach today made a pleasant change from all of the juveniles I've seen recently. I can't say I've ever seen such a stunning autumn male before, the black mask bordered by white eye stripe and throat contrasting wonderfully with the ochre coloured breast and brown back, and note the black wings with pale fringes. Just beautiful, at least the match of any spring wheatear. Presumably the deep colours make this a Greenland race bird Leucorhoa. There were also three juvenile wheatears nearby. 

Apart from the deeper colours, Leucorhoa is also said to be larger with longer wings and a more upright stance and these photos seem to show the latter though size and wing length are harder to judge.  

Unfortunately though, I don't think that it's possible to be certain of the identification of Leucorhoa in the field.

Stac Pollaidh

My last day in the beautiful North West Highlands and it was the best day of the lot for weather. Before today I hadn't seen much of the mountains here due to mist, low cloud or drizzle, but today it all cleared up and Inverpolly was revealed in all of it's glory.

When it's like this it truly can be described as the most beautiful and spectacular part of the UK and despite the large increase in tourists this year, virtually all of it is still remote and devoid of people. Today I decided to make the most of the weather and go to the place where I was likely to get the best views of all, the summit of Stac Pollaidh..... or to be more accurate, as close to the summit as I was prepared to go.   

Stac Pollaidh is not a very high mountain, at 612m, 2008 feet it's nowhere near the height needed to qualify as a Munro but it is a very spectacular mountain largely because it rises from relatively flat and low lying ground. The actual summit is a very difficult and dangerous scramble, one the the hardest in the UK apparently and is not a place that I am remotely interested in getting to. Fortunately there is a ridge just below the summit which allows incredible views which are good enough for me and most other people.

Rhue Lighthouse

After visiting Stac Pollaidh I still had an hour to kill before I needed to leave for Inverness airport so I headed for Rhue Lighthouse just about four miles north of Ullapool on Loch Broom. 

I was on my own for most of the time, just sitting on the edge of the rocks looking out to sea. It was still and calm and very relaxing, a very pleasant end to my trip. An otter fished close by and a summer plumage red-throated diver was in the bay. Further out there were gannets and a black guillemot, but I didn't see any of the harbour porpoise that I had seen here from the ferry yesterday.

Otter

From the Ullapool to Stornoway Ferry

No visit to Ullapool is complete without a day trip on the ferry to Stornoway and back. It's not as good a dedicated whale watching trip, but at £20 a head as a foot passenger it's a lot cheaper and offers the chance of seeing a few decent cetaceans and seabirds. Today I caught the 10:30am ferry from Ullapool, we arrived at Stornoway at 1pm and left at 2pm, back in Ullapool for 4:45pm. If you want to go ashore you've hardly got time to get past the ferry car park at Stornoway before you need to be back on the boat but then that's not what I was here for. I was here for the boat journey.

The plan is pretty much the same as on the whale watching trip, look out for large groups of sea birds feeding and if you find one you may well have hit the jackpot. The only problem is the ferry just ploughs on, sticking to it's set course and speed and doesn't really care too much about what you have seen. It's not going to stop to let you have a closer look, you have to rely on birds and cetaceans being close enough and obliging enough for you to get a decent look at them. 

The photo above is looking south from the ferry towards Skye, you can even make out the Old Man of Storr and in the foreground you can see a flock of gannets feeding. A couple of minutes scanning through these and a minke whale revealed itself briefly about four times. Not a great view but decent enough to get a positive identification.

Bits and pieces from Inverpolly

I shouldn't really use the label "Bits and pieces from Inverpolly" when I'm talking about some of the most beautiful of British birds in one of the most spectacular parts of the country. Today I counted five black-throated and seven red-throated divers all in summer plumage on various lochs as I drove to Ullapool and back for my ferry trip. These really are up there amongst my favourite birds, completely different species to the winter plumage birds we see around the coast. I think you should get an extra tick for summer plumage divers. 

My very first trips to Inverpolly back in the 1970's were specifically to see these birds on their breeding grounds and they still give me a thrill to this day.

Rose-coloured Starling, Stoer

Two days ago I stopped off at the tiny village of Stoer just north of Lochinver, hoping to see a rose-coloured starling that had been reported a few days earlier. I didn't see that bird but while I was looking a white-tailed eagle flew over low and provided some consolation. Today I returned and found the starling showing well on feeders in one of the gardens. Not a bad village list for me so far!

It's a rather bedraggled looking individual not helped by the dull, drizzly weather. At first I thought that it was an adult but I now consider it a 1st summer due to the brown rather than black nape.

Only my third 'adult' rose-coloured starling.

Whale watching in the Minch

When I made plans to visit northern Scotland in the middle of August, my main hope was that I would see a few whales and dolphins because late summer is a peak time for seeing them. It was always going to be a longshot because as somebody said, "there's a whole lot of nothing out there" and I expected long periods of seeing nothing except the sea, but my attitude is if you don't try you don't see so get out there and give it a go. I certainly won't see them sat at home.

There are three requirements when it comes to seeing cetaceans. Firstly you need to go to the right places, secondly you need to go at the correct time of year and finally you need a huge slice of luck. With this in mind, today was always going to be the big day, a trip out into the Minch with Hebridean Whale Cruises from Gairloch. It was the right time of year and if anybody could get me to the right places it was these guys. Now I just needed the luck.

Just getting on the trip was a mammoth achievement because the bookings go so fast, especially this year when due to Covid restrictions they have been running less trips. For three weeks prior to the bookings becoming available online I had checked five or six times a day, morning, noon and night, it was almost an obsession, hoping to be able to book for today, the 17th August and the only day I could really make this week without disrupting my entire holiday. Finally, just after midnight last Thursday, the dates appeared and at 5:30am the same day I booked my place. Less than 12 hours later the trip was sold out.

I've been on plenty of whale watching trips in the past, especially off Australia and New Zealand, but it was obvious right from the start that this was going to be a trip unlike any other that I have been on. All of the other trips allow you to wander freely around on a largish boat in your own clothing, often with small children wandering around and the Australian trips in particular provide you with a cup of tea and a slice of cake, all very civilised. Not this one. First we had to don full waterproof gear as provided by the company, thick padded stuff to keep you warm as well as dry, and over that we had to put on a life jacket. 

Then there was the seating arrangements. There was only space for 12 people to sit and on our trip we only had 10 to allow a bit more space between us, though I really don't think that Covid could have survived this trip! They weren't normal seats, it was more like sitting on a horse with the seat between your legs with a small hand rail on the back of the seat in front for you to hold onto. There would be no wandering around on this boat, no toilets and certainly no tea and cake or small children. This boat was built for speed.

It was a four and a half hour trip covering a large area of the Minch, the sea between mainland Scotland and the Outer Hebrides. Our route took us from Gairloch to the north end of Skye, then up to the Shiant Islands off Lewis and a little further north beyond that, before turning and heading back to Gairloch.  Fortunately I remembered to plot the route on an app on my phone and we covered about 72 miles in total.

Wildlife in the oceans tends to be concentrated around food sources and so large parts of the trip involved moving at high speed, bouncing over waves with spray crashing over the boat as we made our way to and from favoured feeding grounds. On the way back especially we must have endured a full 45 minutes of this, every 30 seconds spray covered the boat, it was like taking a never ending shower with all of your clothes on and it was relentless. Relentless, wonderful and exhilarating, with breathtaking scenery as we made our way past the islands. It was worth the money for the journey back alone, real high octane stuff, the kind of thing that some people pay good money for minus the whales and dolphins!

The whole trip was just a wonderful experience from start to finish. When we arrived back at the harbour I could barely walk when I got off the boat!

Minke whale probably juvenile.

We saw at least two minke whales, an adult and a juvenile. The animal at the top of the post is the adult. Juveniles don't accompany their parents and these two probably aren't related, they've just been brought together by a convenient food supply. We watched them feeding in amongst the gannets for a good 30 minutes, occasionally lunge feeding. The juvenile surfaced right by the boat on one occasion, so close I could hear it's blow. What an experience.

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.

Sinclairs Bay

A very enjoyable day today spent at Sinclair's Bay, just north of Wick. I started off at Keiss beach which is just wonderful, with miles of beach which was more or less devoid of people, or at least it was while I was there first thing this morning. A really nice selection of waders on the beach including sanderling, bar-tailed godwit, grey plover, dunlin, ringed plover and most surprising of all, a juvenile ruff.

Small groups of swallows were heading south west for the duration on my visit and in total probably numbered a few hundred, whilst on the sea there were three species of diver, two each of red-throated and black-throated and three great northerns. A pale phase arctic skua harried the terns on the beach.

Later in the day I parked at Ackergill and walked along the coast to Noss Head lighthouse via the ruined Castle Sinclair.

Arctic skua with Noss Head in the background.