Highlands Trip June 2014 Photo Summary

Highland Sightings

Today's birds:

Cuckoo (heard)
Oystercatcher
Greylag Goose
Curlew
Red Grouse
Common Sandpiper
Pied Wagtail
Black-throated Diver
Buzzard
Cormorant
Common Scoter
Crested Tit
Eider
Peregrine

Cairn Gorm, Glenmore Forest

Glenmore

Ring Ouzel

Cairn Gorm

Ptarmigan

Snow Bunting

Wheatear

Dotterel

River Walk to Loch Morlich

Mistle Thrush

House Martin

Siskin

Swift

Pied Wagtail

Wren

Swallow

Dipper

Chaffinch

Willow Warbler

Loch Garten Osprey Centre, Loch Mallachie, Tulloch Moor

Loch Garten Osprey Centre

What's there to say?  Not much apart from this is the place to come if you want to see nesting Osprey almost with the naked eye!  The visitor centre has plenty of fixed high quality scopes (probably Vortex) for you to get up nice and close.  The camera surveillance is the best I've seen of any Osprey project and there are 10+ live screens around the centre.  The nesting area is rather an ugly affair and is essentially an Iron pole with a nest on top and surveillance camera looming over.  This was installed as someone apparently tried to fell the tree the Osprey originally nested in!  Madness!

Loch Mallachie and Woodland Trail

Cuckoo (heard)
Willow Warbler
Chaffinch
Greenfinch
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Crested Tit (lifer)
Coal Tit
Wren
Goldeneye
Redstart
Treecreeper
Common Sandpiper
Pied Wagtail

Tulloch Moor

Whinchat

Buzzard 

Meadow Pipit

Tufted Duck!

Pine Marten - Loch an Eilein (near)

The floodlit hide session was from 21:00 - 00:00.  Mostly photographers present.  I didn't think photography was ideal with such low light so I decided to film instead.  This Pine Marten was the only mammal that showed it's face other than some distant Red Deer.

Insh Marsh RSPB - Kingussie

Insh Marsh RSPB

Willow Warbler
Lapwing
Curlew
Jackdaw
Mallard
Grey Heron
Swallow
Greylag Goose
Black-headed Gull
Starling
Oystercatcher
Swift
Blackbird
Cuckoo (heard)
Coal Tit

Invertromie Trail - River Tromie

Great Tit

Wren

Blue Tit

Starling

Treecreeper

Pied Wagtail

Tree Pipit

Buzzard

Aviemore

Hooded Crow

Queen Elizabeth Forest Park, Lake of Mentieth and Argaty Red Kites

So, we have arrived in Aviemore!  We thought we would make the most of the journey north by stopping off at a few spots along the way.

Queen Elizabeth Forest Park – The Lodge Forest Visitor Centre

This is an area of extensive woodland and small Lochs.  The visitor centre is outstanding with toilets and a café with spectacular views.  The setup there is a partnership between the Forestry Commission and the RSPB the main focus of the being the nearby nesting Osprey with live cams in operation.   The volunteers there know their stuff and the area thoroughly.  A word of warning though, the reserve has a ‘Go Ape’ park there.  This is a kind of outdoor abseiling, climbing, mountain biking, zip line swinging type thingy.  Also there was Spaniel there off the lead charging about like a thing possessed that chased a Grey Wagtail up the river to the waterfall.  I know these adventure themed things aren't everyone’s cup of tea, so if you do visit don’t be surprised if a screaming child zooms over your head on a zip wire and flushes the birds you’re trying to see.  Species at Queen Elizabeth Forest Park included:

Willow Warbler
Chaffinch
Great Tit
Grey Wagtail
Long-tailed Tit
Dunnock
Red Squirrel
Coal Tit
Jay

Dukes Pass

This area is part of a much bigger raptor trail but we didn't have time to drive the full course.

Buzzard
Raven

Lake of Mentieth

Lake of Mentieth is approximately 4 miles east of Queen Elizabeth Forest Park and Scotland’s only ‘LAKE’!  Here we were lucky enough to get good views of Osprey!  Species:

Osprey
Pied Wagtail
Great Crested Grebe
Grey Heron

Argaty Red Kites – Doune

Red Kite (Lifer)

Inchcailleach Island and Inversnaid RSPB Loch Lomond

So we've arrived in Scotland.  A tour of 10 days that will take us to Glasgow and surrounding area then on to the Highlands.  We've read in a few guides that some can find birding in parts of Scotland frustrating - basically saying that pace of birding here can be slow, it's quality not quantity - and today was a fine example of that.

Inchcailleach Island

Inchcailleach Island is a NNR in Loch Lomond and is about 20 miles from Glasgow.  The island is accessed by a small boat sailing from Balmaha.  The sailings are run on a ad-hoc basis and at time of writing the crossing costs £5 PP (adult return) with the crossing taking about 3 minutes.  The boatyard is well signposted and owned by the friendly Macfarlane family.

The boat dropped us off at the North East point of the island and we decided to work our way around the reserve clockwise.  The first thing we noticed was the dense foliage.  It's mostly Oak woodland with Alder in the wetter areas.  The higher ground gives way to Scots Pine and Larch.  Plenty of birds singing but seeing them would prove to be much harder!  Usually we watch with the naked eye and wait for movement then follow up with the bins but the foliage was so thick this method proved unfruitful.  The south part of the island brought:

Chaffinch
Willow warbler
Blue tit
Carrion Crow
Wren
Robin

Not a vast number of species eh.

Things got slightly more interesting as we headed to the north of the island:

Garden Warbler
GS Woodpecker
Raven 
Cuckoo (heard)
Blackcap
Long-tailed Tit
Goldcrest
Greenfinch

The path doesn't take you to the outer reaches of the island (it's more of a inland circle) so there was potentially much more to see.  I believe the island has the most southerly breeding population of Capercaillie so no doubt these are present in the areas the path steers you away from.

The drive to Inversnaid RSPB passed a number of small Lochs:  Loch Ard, Loch Chon and Loch Arklet.  Species noticed briefly whilst passing were:

Red- Breasted Merganser

Buzzard

Peregrine

Common Sandpiper

Canada Goose

Pied Wagtail

Inversnaid RSPB

Inversnaid RSPB has no visitors centre and  free parking is provided by the local council which the neighbouring hotel also uses.  The reserve's nature trail takes you along the banks of Loch Lamond then up an unforgiving set of very steep steps to a summit then back down again.  If you're here looking for birds I'd strongly suggest not going up the steps and just sticking to the path that runs along the banks of the Loch.  The climb up is tough and the most interesting birds, are to be found on the banks feeding on the abundant midges.  The climb up is good however if you want to see butterflies - and a nice view!

Species here were:

Pied Flycatcher

GS Woodpecker

Hooded / Carrion Crow Hybrid

Robin

Common Sandpiper

Pied Wagtail 

Swallow

 On the drive home we saw a number of raptors but were not always in an ideal spot to pull over and have a better look.  Most of them were Buzzards but Becky thinks she may have seen an Osprey over the Loch.  Whilst passing over Keltie Water I saw a very small raptor, mostly grey with a black tail being mobbed by 3 garden birds - I can only assume this was a Merlin.  I also heard what I'm pretty sure was a Curlew calling which was nice to hear as they are mostly absent from the estuary at the moment.  On to Aviemore tomorrow.