Another forecast of wind and showers, decided us on another road trip, this time we would follow the coast road north to Ullapool, an Iceland gull had been reported there for a few days and I love a white-winger, so with that as a vague target we headed off, the scenery once again was awesome. We found a car park, with stunning views of the Summer Isles and surrounds, while we were admiring the view a Snipe flushed up did a short song flight and promptly disappeared into the grass, no pics 😢 but a nice moment!
The road climbed up into more moorland type area with great views of the mountains, there had been a few recent snowfalls, making it even more picturesque but it was pretty cold when we ventured out of the car and the odd hail storm enlivened things!!😀
We arrived in Ullapool and walked down to the harbour, vague notions of catching the ferry across to Stornoway and back were dashed both by Covid restrictions and the fact that we had missed it anyway doh!!
The Harbour itself looked beautiful, the wind had died down and the water was dead calm, a single Eider flew across, the only one we saw all week, a distant Black Guillemot, a few shags and quite a few gulls dotted about on the water.
Some pics of the Harbour below
And some of the aforementioned birds and a Grey Seal below
So I hear you cry what about the Iceland Gull? Well I could brag about my awesome patience and legendary fieldcraft that eventually found the beast, but the truth was it appeared almost immediately and flew around wonderfully, a fine example of it's kind an absolute stunner, although there was a slight bit of trespass on to the quayside to get some of the shots below!!
Perhaps a few to many pics but what an awesome bird!!! We celebrated with some delicious fish and chips, the sign said "Don't feed the Seagulls" Well we all know there is no such thing as Seagulls but they turned down my request to feed the kin awesome Iceland Gull 😢 So we had some homemade Ice Cream instead I also bought some whisky flavoured Fudge for my colleagues at work, but unfortunately ate it by accident so they had to have shortbread instead, this sort of accident happens to me a lot!!😃 We also had a flypast by a Jet Fighter which came up the loch at a very low height.
The journey back was just as scenic, but was also enlivened by some feral Goats walking down the middle of the road and a Red-breasted Merganser on a loch close to the road!!
We arrived back at base where we enjoyed a pleasant relax in the Hot Tub, at which point a Gannet flew right overhead whilst our Willow Warbler serenaded us from a near by tree, was a couple of Common Sandpipers in the bay as well!! It can be said in the first picture that I wasn't quite ready for the Gannet, luckily it came around for a second pass!!
Warning pic of me in the tub approaching!!
No comments:
Post a Comment