July 2012 archive

Scotland Holiday Day 11 : 16th July 2012 : Isle of May / Bass Rock

On the Sunday we spent the day doing family visits and so on in Edinburgh and Musselburgh but we added an additional day onto our holiday so that I could have a chance to take a boat trip out to the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth as I had done last year. I was so impressed with both getting there and being there that I just wanted to do it all again. As it happens the weather was not the same as our previous sail out to the island – it was lovely and calm all the way and totally dry. This time I did not want to go on the guided walk but just to roam around the island on my own taking photographs and just sitting and looking at everything.

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Scotland Holiday Day 9 – 14th July 2012 : Red Kites at Doune

On the Saturday we had to get the ferry from Mull to the eastern coast of Scotland. Today would mostly be driving but we thought that we could fit in a little bit of birding. We drove from Oban across the Trossachs  to Crainlarich, Callander and Doune. We stopped at Lerrock’s Farm in Doune because we happened to be passing at just the right time for us to drop in to see the feeding of the Red Kites that we had also attended last summer. We were hoping to repeat the same experience but we were were told that a lot of people had already booked so the hide would be busy.

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Scotland Holiday Day 8 – 13th July 2012 : Mull

It was our last day on the island and we had a long drive next day so we started out thinking that we would have a simple day by driving down to Fishnish Bay and take a walk along the coast without much driving. There are a couple of good parking places around here so we took our packed lunch and planned to have lunch after our  walk. As it turned out the walk was not really as close to the Sound of Mull as it had looked on the map. Effectively it ended up as a walk through a forest on quite a hot day. Also it was a little late in the year for singing woodland birds so many of them were already a bit skulking.

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Scotland Holiday Day 7 – 12th July 2012 : Mull

On our seventh day of holiday – our sixth day on Mull – we decided to have a more leisurely day and to drive around a few parts of the island that were on our “to visit” list that we hadn’t seen yet. We decided to start with Loch Frisa which is, of course, the home of the original pair of White-tailed Sea Eagles that were introduced on Mull. We took the Dervaig road from Tobermory and parked the car just off the road in a little car park and started to walk down to the west end of the loch. The left side of the path was rocky hillocks and the right hand side was brambly scrub land and bog. The time of year was not particularly good for birding it being a little late in the season but there were still plenty of birds popping up briefly from the undergrowth.

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Scotland Holiday Day 6 – 11th July 2012 : Lunga and Staffa

On the Wednesday we had arranged a boat trip to Lunga and Staffa with Staffa Tours. The island of Lunga is the largest of the Treshnish Islands and is a famous seabird colony with a large Puffinry. Our boat set off from Tobermory and crossed the Sound of Mull to Kilchoan on the Ardnamurchan peninsula on mainland Scotland. We picked up a few more passengers and then set out for Lunga all the time looking for sea mammals and birds both on the water and on the island cliffs we passed by. A lot of the passengers on the boat were also bird enthusiasts so there were lots of eyes peeled looking for eagles. As we passed Cruachan Treshnish, the 216 m high mountain at the very edge of the western coast of Mull just past Calgary Bay, we could see two small dark shapes perched on top of the mountain and these were clearly too big to be anything other than eagles and they were, in fact, Golden Eagles, a pair of which are known to have lived in the area for a long time.
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Scotland Holiday Day 5 – 10th July 2012 : Sea Eagles at Loch Na Keal

The previous day we had gone to Glen Seilisdeir to see the White-tailed Eagle’s nest in the forest bu we wanted to have a closer experience of these birds so to this end we had also booked a boat trip with Mull Charters who did 10am boat trips up Loch Na Keal to the area where the eagles fished.This involved us driving down to Salen Bay and turning left to cross the island at it narrowest point to get to Gruline and then we took the B8073 to the Ulva Ferry. As well as being the pier for the short hop over to Ulva which is supposed to be a very beautiful island, it was also the setting off point for our boat trip. As we stood waiting for our boat and gazing into the harbour where there were a few small boats moored another person waiting for the same boat as us pointed out to us an otter frolicking in the water of the harbour !

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Scotland Holiday Day 4 – 9th July 2012 : Sea Eagles at Glen Seilisdeir

When we arranged our holiday on Mull we had a number of target birds we hoped to see but one of the most exciting was without question the largest UK bird of prey, the White-tailed Eagle. Mull, of course, is one of the main centres on the west of Scotland for the re-introduction of these animals into the wild and for some years the birds at Loch Frisa were the starts of the programme. This year, however, attention has moved to a pair of birds that feed in Loch Scridian and have their nest in the forest in Glen Seilisdeir. It was these birds we hoped to see.

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Scotland Holiday Day 3 – 8th July 2012 : Corncrakes on Iona

We arrived on Mull on Saturday 7th July and by the time we were settled into our self-catering cottage the rain was pouring down and things did not seem very auspicious at all. However by 9 am the next morning things were much better and we were picked up by our tour guides, Stuart and Ruth from Mull Magic Walks and Tours who were driving us and another family, who were also based in Tobermory, down through the island and over on the ferry to Iona where we hoped that we would be able to see, or at least hear, Corncrakes.

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