I've been back at the Mull for exactly one month and it has been an eventful month on and near to the reserve. Lambing has now finished at the Mull Farm so as you pass the fields on your way up to the reserve, you'll notice the fields are full of sheep and bouncy lambs. There's also been an MOD exercise in Luce Bay so you may also have noticed soldiers camping out at the Tarberts, or lurking in gorse bushes. Work to reinstate the drystane wall above the southern cliff edge has continued and is nearing completion.
Roe deer - copyright Harry Hogg
There haven't been huge numbers of visitors in March but they've been top quality. This weekend I've had the pleasure of talking to some really interesting people including Richard who did my job back in 2000 when we first opened the visitor centre here in the bothy - great to chat about the 'old' times. Some Spanish tourists popped in on a very brief visit and I added another bird to my vocabulary - charran is Spanish for tern. Yesterday started very quietly so I was able to have a long chat with Harry who had been on the reserve for a couple of hours before I opened the visitor centre and had lots of sightings to report. He kindly sent me some of his beautiful photographs which I am delighted to use in this blog, starting with this cracking photo of our two roe deer which he bumped into on his walk around the reserve. I mainly see them first thing in the morning if I go for a walk round, later on they manage to hide themselves away from the public gaze.
Harry had also seen several birds of prey: one of the peregrines at Lagvag with a kill, a later sighting around the south cliffs, a merlin and a kestrel. The kestrels are seen very frequently now, hovering over the heath in search of a pipit or vole, in fact there is one hovering as I write. A more unusual sighting was the tiny goldcrest which he saw sitting on the new drystane wall on the south of the reserve; no doubt this bird was on passage and headed for more suitable wooded habitat.
The seabirds have yet to settle down on the cliffs, on calm days they occupy their nest sites and at other times they are absent or rafting on the sea around the Mull. You can always tell where the kittiwakes are - the noise that a raft of 30 or so kittiwakes can make is amazing. The shags are now sitting on nests and will soon be incubating eggs if they aren't already. They are very attentive parents and both sexes incubate the eggs.
The wheatears have now returned to the Mull, my first sighting of a really dapper male was a week ago, above the Foxes Rattle at the southern-most corner of the reserve; he was singing and looking really splendid in the sunshine - I was sure no female wheatear could resist him.
The gorse is bursting into bloom now and the yellow theme is continued with the other early flowering plants such as coltsfoot and lesser celandine. If the weather is kind then we will soon start to see a more varied palette of colours on the heath and cliffs.
Several visitors have reported seeing porpoises from Lagvag or from the Foghorn, but some have been lucky enough to spot divers from the same locations and I am not talking about frogsuited human divers. Sightings of red-throated divers have been confirmed, in their winter plumage, but there have also been possible sightings of black-throated divers and a great northern diver. Harry took a couple of excellent photos of the red-throated diver just off the reserve at East Tarbert:
Copyright Harry Hogg
Finally, a plug for the guided walks at the reserve - these start tomorrow and will continue every Tuesday and Thursday through the season. Meet up at the RSPB visitor centre at 1pm, wear suitable clothing and sturdy shoes or boots. £3 per person for non-members, £1.50 for members and children go free. See you tomorrow?