Scotland Trip Day 5 : Ythan Estuary : 31st May 2014 The other couple that were in our group of birders at Grantown-on-Spey mentioned to us that they had just seen a King Eider on the Ythan Estuary at Newburgh the day before they arrived in Grantown. We had been to the Ythan Estuary before…
Scotland Trip Day 5 : Avie Lochan, Strathdearn, Lochindorb, Loch Allan : 30th May 2014 When we booked our three-day guided birding tour with John Poyner we reserved an additional day at the hotel so that we could re-visit some of our favourite places on our own and spend as much time at each location…
Scotland Trip Day 4 : The Moray Coast : 29th May 2014 We started our last day of guided birding with yet another attempt to see Crested Tits. After that we were to go off to the Moray coast to visit all the small bays and harbours up there including Spey Bay, Lossiemouth, Burghead and…
Scotland Trip Day 3 : Mountain, Valley and Coast : 28th May 2014 For our second day of guided birding John decided that we would do some birding around the forest near Loch Garten and then see what the weather was going to be like later in the morning with a view to a possible…
Scotland Trip Day 2 : Grantown on Spey Environs : 27th May 2014 We met for breakfast and the decision based on the weather was that we would spend our first day in the area that surrounds Grantown-on-Spey, an area that includes forest, rivers, glens and grouse moors. We loaded up the minibus and headed…
Scotland Trip Day 1 : Loch Garten : 26th May 2014 We left Loch of the Lowes and headed off for Grantown on Spey. As we drove up there we saw a Hooded Crow and lots of House Martins – seemingly at every house we came across, suddenly there were Martins. There were also plenty…
Scotland Trip Day 1 : Loch of the Lowes : 26th May 2014 We started our holiday to Scotland by driving up to Kippen, north of Stirling, where we stayed overnight. The next day we drove from Kippen to the Scottish Wildlife Trust’s reserve at Loch of the Lowes near Dunkeld arriving there around 11.30…
Ring Ouzels at Cat and Fiddle 20th May 2014 After our morning at Goyt Valley with the birding group our small select group of “lunchers” stopped off for some lunch at the Cat and Fiddle – it only had one beer on pump and one in bottle. The pump beer was a blonde beer called…
Birding Group Visit to the Upper Goyt Valley 20th May 2014 We had been to Macclesfield Forest, which is quite close by, two weeks previously and not seen a great deal. This visit to the area was an entirely different kettle of fish. We parked up at the second car park near the southern end…
Birding Group Visit to RSPB Conwy and the Conwy Estuary 13th May 2014 The birding group visit to RSPB Conwy was a little lacking in spectacle, unless you are into Sedge Warblers in which case this was thest place in the world to be. The entire site seemed to be full of Sedge Warblers flying…
