Spring watch II

On Glen Forsa shoreline today were 25 White Wagtails, a dozen Meadow Pipits plus Skylarks. I helped my friends Arthur and Pam Brown on a Tetrad bird count today, It was a good day out and we saw Goldcrest and Goldfinch, lots of Wheatear and Meadow Pipits. A skein of 30+ Pink footed Geese flew north over us and there were two Great northern Divers very close inshore on Loch Spelve. Along the shore road at Lochdon there were 2 Orange tip Butterflies and the gorse is looking beautiful right now.

Spring watching

At Fidden there were 23 Black tailed Godwit passing through, kindly reported by Bryan Rains (Wild about Mull) I had a great day out down at Fidden last week where there were lots of Pied Wagtails and amongst then were at least 7 White Wagtail. A flock of Golden Plover about 150 strong which I searched through, hoping to find a Dotterel perhaps. There were hundreds of Skylarks and Meadow Pipits and a couple of Twite.

There was a report of Ring Ouzel at Loch na Keal and I am sure we have breeding birds on the island, but so far this has not been confirmed. I am getting too old for climbing mountains and have to rely on others to pass on information. We have Sea Eagle chicks at two sites and others will follow these next few weeks. Its always a great feeling when our birds hatch, after watching and waiting for 38 days. Spring migrants are arriving daily and we have heard Grasshopper Warbler at Lochdon, Cuckoo and Tree Pipit. Its a great time of year.

wheatear

Spring has arrived on mull

Spring has arrived, although you would not believe it by the awful weather wqe are having, it's been wild wet and windy.

Our first spring migrants have arrived with Wheatear always the first followed by sandmartin and swallow and a couple of days ago, a willow warbler and tree pipit. It won't be long before we hear our first cuckoo (about a weeks time). We have also seen good numbers of skylarks and meadow pipits arrive in this last week. Along with pied wagtails at Fidden I saw my first white wagtail of the year. Passing through at this time of year, again at Fidden) were 150 golden plover and 100+ lapwings. At Laggan Bay we found a summer plumaged slavonian grebe and also one at Dervaigh on loch Cuin, here at Lochdon wwe still have some wigeon and teal with us, they will be moving off shortly and wader numbers and species are increasing as new birds arrive, redshank, greenshank and ringed plover. The next wader to arrive to spend the summer here will be common sandpiper and then we will know that spring has really sprung.