Eagles at Last!!

 After two and a bit days on Mull, land of the Eagles, we had seen a grand total of one Eagle, a Golden Eagle that was so high up it was nearly in Space!! Today seemed to have the best weather forecast of the week, so it's now or never!!! We started with a trip to the north, a castle involved, but it was shut, sadly😂But we saw it from the car park!!

On the plus side we did see a nice posy Buzzard, one of many we've seen on Mull, a few Redwings on a wire, but they didn't pose!

Common Buzzard

We headed back to the Eagle spot from yesterday, here we met a lady getting ready for a bike ride who gave us the dreaded you should have been here ten minutes ago speech. Apparently as she pulled up a White tailed Eagle had flown down the Loch!! Noooooooooo😱😱!!! denied!!😢 However the Lady did give us some very good info about where the WTE were likely to be and at least we knew there was one about!!!

I set about scanning the banks of the Loch and the trees in the distance, whilst keeping half an eye out behind us where the Goldie had appeared yesterday, during one such scan I picked up a grey bird flying over the grass land, lots of Gulls about, but not this time, male Hen Harrier, result, superb bonus bird!! Sadly distant, but got some record shots!

Hen Harrier

Being watched first Red Deer we've seen with Antlers!

We continued to scan and amazingly I found two White Tailed Eagles, though you could say they were fairly distant!

Spot the Eagles😂

Meanwhile Margie had made a friend!!

A nice view on the way to the Eagle spot

Margie's friend

We decided to move around the loch to get a bit closer to the Eagles though I was concerned that they wouldn't be visible. We got to the parking space the lady with the bike told us about, a couple of Birders were already present, but hadn't seen any Eagles, I got my bearings all mixed up, but luckily one of the other Birders ignored my directions and found an Eagle!! Whoop!! But hiding on the other side of a tree, dang!!!

Come out you bugger!!

Luckily the other birder hadn't finished yet and she'd  found another Eagle and this one wasn't hiding!! Hurrah!!

Fantastic views of what I think is an adult!

The birds sat there being magnificent for a while before the youngster took off and flew away!

Flying off!

At this point I turned my attention to the Loch, scanning was quite successful, a flock of 13 Common Scoter again all Female/Juvenile types, lots of Mergansers and Divers one of which tried to convince me was a BTD but turned out to be a GND, I found a Slav Grebe, then another, then another, to cut a long story short there were at least nine, a very distant male Goosander, was spotted by another Birder, a female Goldeneye, Wigeon, Teal, Mallards, Oystercatchers and loads of Gulls all the good stuff!! There were also a couple of very noisy Rock Pipits buzzing around! 

Oystercatchers

Great Northern Diver

Some of the Slavs

Rock Pipit

Some of the Slavs came a bit closer

Goldeneye

Cormorant

Meanwhile Margie was enjoying the scenery as well as the Eagles!

Meanwhile in the tree, still looking magnificent

The youngster flew back in, or maybe a different similar looking bird!

They are fantastic birds, but sadly they decided to fly off, probably for the best as we might still be there if they hadn't 😂

Plenty of Gulls about as well!

Feeling it couldn't get any better than that and getting a bit chilly we decided to head off following the road to the Ulva Ferry, we'd hardly gone a mile down the road, when the Eaglefest kicked off again a pair of Goldies and not miles high!!

Golden Eagle, very difficult to get much detail in the pictures, in the grey conditions!

The size difference between the Male and the larger Female was very obvious as they came together

I was distracted by a couple of Great Northern Divers on the Loch next to the road!!

Margie was distracted by another couple of "cute" Cows!!

We headed off again as the Eagles departed along the ridge we'd hardly gone half a mile when another Eagle appeared, WTE once again apologies for the pics!

Incredibly a few miles later on another Goldie appeared!

A quick Hoodie to break the monotony of Eagles

Golden Eagle

We had reached Calgary Beach again, the Geese from last visit were on the beach and the Pinkfoot was still with em! Nice Grey Heron flew in off the sea across the beach!!

More Oystercatchers

Grey Heron

Sleeping Pinkfoot

Now us Birders agonize over bird disturbance, rightly so, photographers are regularly lambasted on social media for getting within 200 yards of an Owl, named and shamed, Margie and I had worked our way along the top of the beach to get the shots of the Geese without waking them up! Not sure why we bothered, a jogger in a bright Yellow fluorescent jacket ran straight through the middle of em, there were Geese and Oystercatchers everywhere, carnage!!! The guy seemed intent on disturbing them!! He wasn't satisfied til he'd flushed every last one of em!!😡  Every cloud though, managed to get a shot of the Pinkfoot in flight!!😂

Greylags can you spot the Pinkfoot

Some nice Common Gulls having a bath in the Surf

The Oystercatchers had relocated close to our path, we were wondering how to get past em without flushing when they all took to the air!! We looked up, yeah you guessed it Eaglefest continues!

WTE

With that we decided to head  back to the ranch!!

A fantastic day, in the end I lost count of the number of Eagles seen, absolutely brilliant, shame the light wasn't a bit kinder too dark for my level of skill to get decent pictures😡!! Forecast looking a bit dodgy for the next couple of days, so fingers crossed we can get out, for more of the same!!!!