Limpy and I made it to Mull again this year - it was just what we needed after a bit of a challenging winter. I'm going to dive right in and show the stars of the visit first, though I'll be adding to the thread as I get through the (large) quantities of photos I took! Here we go:
Enjoy!
Our herring gulls are red listed birds. Think about that the next time you hear some flaming idiot calling for a cull of them.
PimperneBloke said:Looking forward to the next set :o)
Here we go. What follows is everything I managed to get photos of (beside the puffins) from the trip out to Lunga and Staffa. This first one was taken before we'd even left Ulva Ferry:
What is it with shags and buoys?
Before we reached Lunga we came across some grey seals and I managed to get this one!
He's an adorable mixture of curious and camera shy.
Off he goes.
Mrs Eider with her ducklings. Awwwwwww!
Once we were on top of the cliff it wasn't just the puffins being obliging - this razorbill was literally bending over backwards to be photogenic. I could have told it it needn't try hard.
My sandeels. Mine!
There were a few fulmars about .........
........ as well as the inevitable herring gulls. The next bird struck terror into the puffins and they all fled into their burrows .........
....... the dreaded great skua, known as a bonxie in that part of the world. It's actually similar in size to the herring gull but its colour made it look bigger. First time I'd seen one!
This guillemot was enjoying the sunshine as we headed to Staffa.
More shags posing at Staffa.
I got very excited when the bloke sitting next to me started calling out the manx shearwaters - another new bird for me!
Beautiful little birds. Somehow I'd always imagined they were bigger.
Finishing with a final shearwater shot.
On the fourth day of our stay we headed to the lovely isle of Iona, which was a first for us both. The little port of Fionnphort has its fair share of starlings and I couldn't resist this adorable youngster:
Courtesy of Limpy's Blue Badge we boarded the ferry (very few vehicles are allowed to cross to Iona) and made the short crossing. A very familiar bird was waiting for us on the beach:
Oystercatchers were everywhere.
We stopped next to a nearby field as we could both hear a right old racket, which turned out to be those elusive corncrakes. Sadly we got no photos of these, though Limpy managed the tiniest glimpse of one before it scuttled to better cover. The next bird was more obliging:
A meadow pipit.
Good to see house sparrows up here! My neighbourhood at home has loads of these.
A beautiful but less than obliging song thrush. Would it turn its head? No.
These lovely little birds had us scratching our heads. Were they some sort of bunting? It turned out that they were twite! Neither of us had seen these before and they firmly fall into the category of 'rare sighting' on the Suffolk coast. I'm always happy to add a new bird to my (very informally kept) list.
He's off.
A gorgeous young rook.
More house sparrows ..........
........ and more!
A young blackbird.
Eventually we headed back to Mull and made our way back to our accommodation. I stopped at Bunessan to catch this handsome bird:
Had to have a hooded crow in here somewhere, didn't I?
This stunning curlew was flaunting itself near Loch Beg.
A little subtlety from this meadow pipit!
Finishing with a lovely stonechat.
With the boat trips over Limpy decided he'd like to head to Loch Beg in the hope of seeing an otter - we saw them there last year, though distantly. As we were heading there, though, we saw a large group of people on the southern shore of Loch Na Keal - these are always worth checking out. It was certainly worth stopping on this occasion:
No less than two otters!
Were we happy? You bet!
A little further on the wheatears appeared and I actually managed to snap one!
A distant group of gannets were diving! This, sadly, was the best shot I could manage. It at least shows the birds, though.
Further down the road this white-tailed eagle reacts to a buzzard in the vicinity of its nest!
The buzzard wisely retreated!
If I had a Christmas tree this is the sort of thing I'd want on top of it.
It was a bit quiet when we parked at Loch Beg - but then a very obliging meadow pipit came along.
It then came right up to the car! Lovely, though I didn't fancy its idea of lunch.
On our way back we saw a familiar boat out in Loch na Keal - looked like another group out to photograph the eagles.
This shag was having a thorough preen.
We were driving up the east coast when this beauty appeared in the Sound of Mull.
I love seeing this sort of thing - they are so beautiful!
Enjoy, as always.