Holiday in Scotland Day 11: Squirrels and Ducks

 May 7th

We started to day at Loch Spynie in the hope of seeing the Garganey that had been reported the day before, typically no sign, but there was a nice close Little Grebe and a family of Mallards. Some ahhhh pictures below!

Little bit disappointing, but things improved dramatically in the car park where we had stonking views of  a Red Squirrel.

Coal Tit

They are definitely cute!! Whilst watching the Squirrel we were distracted by  a lot of noise from a large Skien of Pinkfoot Geese flying over, was surprised there were so many this late but nice to see!

Margie's camera captured the whole Skien, I haven't tried to count them but more than a few!

Margie got a coupler of pics of the squirrel as well

My pics of the Pinkfeet

Back to the Cutie!!

We dragged ourselves away, a couple of Hares were on the fields adjacent to the entrance track!

We had a tip off that there were some feeders attracting some Crested Tits in the forest near Lossiemouth, unfortunately when we got there, they had been removed possibly due to vandalism which was a  bit annoying! But there were a few bits and bobs on the walk from the town.

Hooded Crow, we saw a a few Hoodies on our holiday most were quite dark, possibly hybrids whereas this one seemed like a pucker one!

Kestrel

Yellowhammer

Goosander, little group of 5 on the river

No Cresties but  a pleasant enough walk Margie got some nice pics of the scenery.

With no luck on the Cresties we went into town and had an Ice Cream and a walk around the Marina, there were some good birds in the sea at the mouth of the river, the best being 5 Long-tailed Ducks but there was plenty of other good stuff as well, a few pics below!

Common Tern

Swallow

Common Tern

Kittiwake

Gannet

Long-tailed Duck

Long-tailed Duck and Red-throated Diver

Whimbrel, 2 of 4 that flew past us out into the firth

Sandwich Tern

Laughing in the face of Health and Safety again!

Lossiemouth War Memorial

Very enjoyable wander around. After this we had a run up to Banff, on the report of another Iceland Gull, predictably no sign when we got there, did have a nice bowl of Cullen Skink for dinner though!! No pictures sadly!