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| Thayer's Gull the really dark bird the six one in if you count from the right |
The Friday before we headed to Scotland we headed up to Lincolnshire
and saw the Thayer’s Gull which was amazing to see.
A very early start
saw us heading up to Gatwick for are flight to Aberdeen, We landed just before
9am and picked up our hire car and headed straight to Loch of Strathberg in
hope of. Seeing the long staying Greater yellowlegs.
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| Tree Sparrow |
1 hour later we
arrived at the reserve Rob parked the car, whilst me and Dad quickly popped
into the visitor centre to see if the Yellowlegs had been seen, the news was
good it had just been seen from the visitor centre before flying off, and
landed out of sight but was possibly viewable from the Tower hide, on our way
to the hide we had 2 Whooper swan fly over us, we soon reached the hide and we
were looking out over a vast area of marsh, it took about 10 minutes for me to
notice a wader moving along the edge on the far side of the marsh and with my
luck I was then watching the Greater yellowlegs.
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| Rock Pipit |
Some really good views were gained as we watched it for quite awhile as it moved about some times in flight giving us a chance to pick out it's rump, there was also a very good
variety of other birds around this included Barnacle goose, Pink footed goose,
3 more Whooper swans and some Black tailed godwits, on the way back we flushed
a Short eared owl right next to the Hide which was nice to see, on the way back
we saw a few Yellowhammers and a nice big flock of Tree sparrows.
From here we
headed to Portsoy to try for White billed diver but we didn't have
any luck with it, but there was great numbers of seabirds such as Long tailed
ducks, Razorbills, lots of Eiders and at least 3 summer plumage Black
guillemots along the harbour wall there was about 3 Rock pipits
flying, Dad then picked out an Iceland gull flying past us heading into the
harbour so we headed round there to try and relocate it, and it was just
sitting on the water by the rocks showing really nicely.
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| Crested tit |
From here we
headed to Loch Garten were we were pleased to see the breeding pair of Ospreys,
there was lot of Siskin's and Chaffinches, on the Loch there was a nice pair of
Red breasted mergansers and 3 Golden eye.
In the wood by Loch mallachie we managed to see our first target species of the Scottish birds which was presented in the form of Crested tit which was amazing to see, from here we headed to the digs for a nice long rest.
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| Eider |
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| Iceland Gull |
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| Long Tailed Duck |
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