After several attempts, I managed to catch up with a male orange tip visiting the garden - actually a notably small specimen, suggesting it hasn't been feeding well.
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| Orange Tip |
This may however be one of the last orange tips to visit as I have started clearing out the garlic mustard, which had become far too dominant and was starting to die off anyway.
Last weekend I was on a nature break in the Highlands with Alex and Vicki. We started with a full day at a location known for eagles and managed a few sightings, though all were at considerable distance. Not long after entering the valley I could see an obviously large bird from the car window and did get one good sighting through the binoculars, when I managed to track a bird across the heather and could make out its tail feathers.
The rest of the day we spent trying to work out whether distant flyers were eagles or buzzards, mostly the latter, some of which may also have been kestrels but mainly to my eye buzzards that managed to hover against the breeze. I was a bit surprised to find that the commonest bird otherwise was house martin, swooping around in large numbers in the afternoon. Oystercatchers and gulls were also present in good numbers, as well as occasional lapwing and curlew.
It was a reasonably summer day so I undertook a couple of forages in the gorse next to the river and was pleased to find a first sighting - the bilberry bumblebee. There was also what I think to be a moss carder bee, rather than a common carder bee. I reckoned I saw one in Cumbria last June, but didn't get close enough to confirm.
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A slight doubt on the latter is that gorse isn't listed as a favoured flower.
On the second day, we took advantage of the time of year to visit Loch Ruthven during the mating season of the slavonian grebe. This is one of the few locations for slavonian grebe and we had instant success as it was the first bird we saw. Several pairs were clearly visible from the hide, passing through the weed. Again there were a lot of house martins swooping over the water and I think some sand martins too.
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| Slavonian Grebe |
Our afternoon walk around the area of Loch Garten was however a disappointment. Hoping perhaps for crested tit or crossbill variations, all we saw was a couple of siskins and chaffinches, a couple more bilberry bumblebees and lots of pine trees as well as bilberry bushes that had barely started to flower.
Here the seasons probably played to our disadvantage as we learned later that crested tits and crossbills are a good deal harder to find in the nesting season. Loch Garten itself is known for hosting birds of prey including osprey and goshawk but it seems you're better off viewing the webcam images rather than trying to see them live.
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