Scotland Holiday Day 8 – 13th July 2012 : Mull

Scotland Holiday Day 8 – 13th July 2012 : Mull

It was our last day on the island and we had a long drive next day so we started out thinking that we would have a simple day by driving down to Fishnish Bay and take a walk along the coast without much driving. There are a couple of good parking places around here so we took our packed lunch and planned to have lunch after our  walk. As it turned out the walk was not really as close to the Sound of Mull as it had looked on the map. Effectively it ended up as a walk through a forest on quite a hot day. Also it was a little late in the year for singing woodland birds so many of them were already a bit skulking.

There were Hooded Crows atop the trees and lower down Song Thrush and Collared Dove and amongst the brambles and short trees, Chaffinch, Willow Warbler and Great Tit. As ever there were Pied Wagtail. We kept an eye out for any birds of prey but we felt a bit enclosed by the woods so after a couple of miles we returned to the car and sat at a picnic bench and had lunch. A little bit thwarted we decided to drive – totally against our previous plan not to drive far – to the Three Lochs in Glen More to see if we could get some good sightings there. We pulled up in the car park where there was a car with a couple already sitting there. I got the scope out and set it up and waited for something to appear. Unfortunately the Short-eared Owls weren’t playing that day so we had quite a wait. But it is such a good habitat that eventually we got a bit of luck.

It wasn’t a sighting that got my attention at first but a cry in the skies. I looked up and saw a male Hen Harrier. As I got my bins up I could see another bird – a female going towards it. They seemed to touch and the male turned and disappeared against the hillside. The female turned left and slowly flew out of view. Was this a Hen Harrier “food pass”. It was all to fleeting but I am convinced that this kind of contact was made. Such a tantalising sight make you want to stay all day at this site but after an hour we felt we needed to get back home. We had all our packing to do as well as tidying up our cottage, we wanted to get some presents from the Tobermory Distillery and local shops. We also had to get an early ferry next day and had to drive from Tobermory to Craignure to get it so we thought we should head back home.

As we drove back up the coastal road from Craignure to Tobermory we saw Herring and Lesser Black-backed Gulls, Black Guillemot, a couple of Oystercatchers and lots of Grey Herons. They Greylag Geese were there again as were the Mute Swans and we even managed to see a Raven. By now we had probably mentally already finished our holiday birding and we were just taking in the lovely views of the Sound of Mull as we drove along in the late afternoon. We were almost at Tobermory when Anne suddenly shouted for me to look. I was on the left side of the car so had to duck my head to see through the window. When I did it was a case of stop, stop, stop ! and as luck would have it, amazingly there was a lay-by on our side of the road. We pulled up and since there was not time to get the scope out I raised my bins to my eyes. It was clear anyway that it would be impossible to get a scope on an already quite close Golden Eagle. The view filled the field of view of my bins and the bird did everything it could to prove that it was a Golden Eagle rather than any other bird of prey. It flew from my right to my left slowly twisting on its axis to show me first the top of its wings and then the underside. It fanned its tail out and twisted it to make a fantastic turn just as it looked like it was going to shoot into the distance and it proceeded to come right back at me and now passed from left to right. I was astonished at the sheer speed of the bird and, just to show itself off properly, as it flew to my right into the distance, it suddenly seemed to pull up, fold it wings back and plunged incredibly quickly towards the ground. It disappeared behind the bend in the coastline and we waited for a while to see if it would appear with some prey in its talons but it did not reappear so I just stood there with my jaw dropped. On virtually the last hour of birdwatching on Mull we had at last had really good, close views of what was unmistakeably a Golden Eagle. We had now managed to see both species of Eagle that are so closely attached to the island.

We returned home beaming with pleasure. We had seen nineteen species – probably more, and including Golden Eagle and Hen Harrier. Over the whole period on Mull and Iona we had added five birds to our life list (Golden Eagle, White-tailed Eagle, Corncrake, Manx Shearwater and Glaucous Gull) and nine to our year list for 2012.

Bird Sightings : Mull