Scotland Holiday Day 4 – 9th July 2012 : Sea Eagles at Glen Seilisdeir

Scotland Holiday Day 4 – 9th July 2012 : Sea Eagles at Glen Seilisdeir

When we arranged our holiday on Mull we had a number of target birds we hoped to see but one of the most exciting was without question the largest UK bird of prey, the White-tailed Eagle. Mull, of course, is one of the main centres on the west of Scotland for the re-introduction of these animals into the wild and for some years the birds at Loch Frisa were the starts of the programme. This year, however, attention has moved to a pair of birds that feed in Loch Scridian and have their nest in the forest in Glen Seilisdeir. It was these birds we hoped to see.

We had two places booked on the 1pm visit to the hide in the forest in Glen Seilisdeir. We had to take a bit of a roundabout tour to pick up our tickets at Craignure Tourist Information and then we travelled across the island via Glen More again. We would have had to take this route from Tobermory anyway because the shorter route down the side of Loch Na Keal was closed because a bit of one of the mountains had slid down in the recent rainstorms and washed a section of the road away. We instead drove along the A849 through Glen More and had to  turn right onto the B8035 ‘scenic route’ at the Kinloch Junction. Even though the road was marked “Closed” we were able to get far along enough it to reach the Forestry Commission track where we met up with the RSPB guide.

When we were all collected we took a short walk down through the woods to the hide. It was explained to us that the woods had a colony of Crossbills they steadfastly evaded us and, in fact, the other birds in the forest seemed to be just as elusive apart from the ever-present Chaffinch and the odd Robin. After about fifteen minutes we reached a path leading off the main route to a sheltered spot under the trees where a large camera nd several scopes had been set up. From there we could see in the near distance a tree with a huge nest and two chicks sitting on the nest looking a little too big for comfort. As we scoped these chicks a parent came flying in and sat just above and to the side of the nest on its favourite observation perch. They had obviously eaten already that day because the chicks and the adult all seemed content to sit around with the only activity on the part of the parent being a bit of preening and the keeping of a close eye on passing Buzzards that we could not see but it surely could. We spent around an hour and a half observing these birds and we felt pretty happy about seeing one of our target birds and the most iconic on the island.

By this time however it was time for us to be heading back. One feature of the island that we had not appreciated is that although it is not a big island, it takes quite a while to get from one place to another with almost all the roads being single track with more or fewer passing places depending upon where you are on the island. Combining that with trying to find places to stop when you see something interesting is quite time consuming. That is another frustrating aspect of the island. Although there are many passing places there are very few parking places and parking in a passing place is frowned upon. The one place where there is a good patch of parking space, however, is in Glen More at the Three Lochs. We had seen Hen Harriers and Short-eared Owls here the day before so we were hoping for more of the same on the way back. We were not to be disappointed as we pulled in and saw two Short-eared Owls but unfortunately no Hen Harrier this day. Driving back to Tobermory we also saw lots of Hooded Crows and Pied Wagtails – both something of a local feature of the landscape. We also saw Goldfinch and Greenfinch, House Sparrows, Woodpigeon, various Gulls, a Buzzard, the usual family of Greylag Geese near Salen and lots of Grey Herons and a Pheasant.

Day two on the island and we had already seen or heard two of our target birds in the Corncrake and the White-tailed Eagle. The only thing was that we were hoping to see more of the eagles flying. We had a further plan for this for tomorrow, however.

Bird Sightings : Mull