June 2, 2016 archive

Scotland Holiday Day 5:  Anagach Forest, Loch Garten, Lochindorb and Nethy Bridge 2nd June 2016

I started off the day with a walk in Anagach Forest but didn’t get any Cresties. I did get a lot of pictures of Red Squirrels, some of which should be OK. I also got a couple of longer distance shots of a Willow Warbler singing.
I returned to the hotel where Anne was still in bed and we got round to having breakfast and made our plans for the day. Because this was our last full day at Grantown-on-Spey before we had to head off to New Deer, we didn’t want to go too far today because I had to get some time in Aviemore trying to buy a birthday present for Colin. We decided on RSPB Loch Garten on the grounds that we still had not seen an Osprey on our Scottish holiday. We went to the visitor centre at 10am and were pretty much the first people into the Osprey viewing centre. The female bird was showing well with one small chick and one very much larger chick. There was a third egg but it had not hatched out. The smaller chick was the third laid and the bigger the first laid, which explained the big difference in their sizes.

We went to the car park about a mile down the road and did the woodland walk that skirts Loch Garten (which has no life in or on it because it is too brackish) and then skirts Loch Mallachy. On Loch Mallachy we saw a female Goldeneye with her chicks. The reserve staff have put nest boxes in the trees for them. But that was it. The woods were not much better with lots of Chaffinches and some Coal Tits. Anne thought she had seen a Crossbill and I thought I heard the noise they make when they split a cone segment but since I didn’t actually see it, I couldn’t claim it.

We left there to try to buy a present at Aviemore. We took the back road to get to Colymbridge and then to Aviemore (I filmed this journey). We didn’t have any joy with presents so we returned to Grantown (which I also filmed) and eventually found a couple of useful books that would be good as presents.

With just a little time left and the weather starting to turn we decided to go up to Lochindorb for a last go at Divers and Ospreys. Nothing was showing which pretty well summed up the whole day. A lot of people we have been speaking to have been a little disappointed at what they have seen – or rather not seen – so we are not the only ones. I think the reason for this is that we are just a little later this year and a lot of the birds are on eggs so fewer are flying about. It would be good to compare the sightings of our previous spring visit with our previous autumn visit to see what that shows.

The afternoon was getting on and the weather was a bit gloomy so we decided to return to Grantown. I set the dashboard video recording again and off we went. As we were nearing the end of the small road from Lochindorb to the Old Military Road that leads back to Grantown, we suddenly saw a very interesting phenomenon. Two meadow Pipits flew in front of the car followed immediately by a much larger bird with long pointed wings and a long tail. Pretty much our first thought once this information had sunk in was that it looked like a Cuckoo. I do not have the software to examine the video in enough detail on my laptop but perhaps I can see something more detailed when I get home. It starts at about 8 minutes into GPO2067. Incredibly enough just after we had joined the main road and were heading back to Grantown (at 12 ½ minutes on the video) we witnessed exactly the same thing. Two Meadow Pipits rising up from the ground (on our left so they did not fly over the front of the car as they previous birds had) followed by a much larger bird with long pointed wings and a long tail. It was exactly the same. It is not possible to say if the one was chasing the two or whether they were all flushed at the same time so it looked that way. But it was a very intriguing sight.

We describesd this later in the day to our past guide, John Poyner, and he thought that it could easily have been Cuckoos. His other possibility was Merlin. I would have preferred the later because it would have been a holiday tick for us but I am sure that they were Cuckoos.

We met up with John Poyner for an evening of birding hoping to see at least Black Grouse, perhaps Owls and hopefully some other birds on the lochs. As it turned out the mist was so bad that neither Grouse nor Owls showed up and the whole evening was something of a wash out. We ended up at Nethy Bridge where we got nice views of Sand Martins but still it was very disappointing and our last day in Grantown on Spey.

Bird Sightings : Anagach Forest

Bird Sightings : Loch Garten

Bird Sightings : Lochindorb

Bird Sightings : Nethy Bridge (Wooden)