Coigach to Gruinard Bay

We're up early the next day, and are disappointed by the lack of loons in close proximity to the campsite. Perhaps that isn't always a feature?

Pronoun guidance: AB1 is an elite hillside scanner. Not. This post covers the events of July 4th, 2018.

Stac Pollaidh

A quick blitz up Stac Pollaidh yields no Rock Ptarmigan, and staring at the mountains in the distance yields no eagles. Gordon's advice for the rest of the day is as follows: stop in Ullapool to pick up Twite, stop in a few places along the coast to look for White-tailed Eagle.

To Ullapool!

We take a brief diversion up an incredibly well-surfaced road to enjoy a coffee at Elphin Tearooms. We help a fellow camera amateur with a lens, and karma repays us with a decent view of some deer hanging about at the top of the hill.

Ullapool is delightful but Twite-free. We manage a very pleasant walk around the town and take the opportunity to top-up on supplies, we're starting to run out of essential foodstuffs (scotch eggs, spanish omelette and pot noodles). AB2 also stocks up on tourist leaflets (also apparently essential, and definitely not totally unused across the rest of holiday).

Badrallach

We take a small detour up the Eastern side of Loch Broom to visit Badrallach. The views are excellent, but blighted by cleggs; several sea eagles could fly by in the time we're spending flailing at them. Our walk from Badrallach is particularly disrupted, although a young Cuckoo does briefly pop up below where we're walking, we quickly decide that a speedy return to the car is a better plan than continuing to fight an unwinnable war on cleggs.

Gruinard Bay

Gordon instructs us that this area of the West coast is all good for White-tailed Eagle. We become elite scanners of remote hillsides, but it earns us only crows. Gruinard Island is keenly scanned for sea eagles pretending to be rocks. None are found.

We arrive at tonight's campsite in Laide, and it immediately goes in our bad books for designating tents an area with no sea view. All the views are given over to static caravans and parking for fully motorised campers. Humph. To add to our disgruntlement, a flock of birds feeding in a meadow behind the campsite stubbornly remain Siskin, rather than Twite.

We hoof some dinner down and speed off to Mellon Udrigle (MU); it looks like there should be a decent circular walk from there, and there's a tiny, tiny possibility we might spot a Petrel or two (Gordon tells us they're active on Priest Island).

Mellon Udrigle

Thankfully, the beach at MU is straight out of the tourist guide, and the light when we reach it is pretty impressive too. There's a campsite next to it: why didn't we stay here? A pair of Ringed Plovers do an excellent 'broken-wing' performance for us; we back off to see if we can spot the chicks, and find two. Super cute.

We set out towards the bit of the land that juts closest to the Summer Isles, and when we get there, set up in the wind-sheltered lea of the hill for a bit of staring at the sea. Amusingly, at this point, we're only around 15km away from where we started this morning; we've probably driven more like 150km.

Not much success is had, and any ideas of staying until darkness are (rightly) pooh-poohed. An attempt will instead be made at a circular-looking walk. After a couple of false starts (we weren't quite as far West as we thought) this goes rather nicely.

As the last light of the day is just leaving, we happen upon a chubby-beaked passerine clinging to a rocky outcrop. Now, that could be Twite. With a bit more light, it could obviously be Twite, but we're now far enough South that five past ten in the evening is twilight rather than daylight.

We take a lot of terrible photos, but having spent much of the day familiarising ourselves with the bird book, we're pretty sure we've got our bird. After a re-examination back at the car, the only diagnostic we're short of is an obviously yellow beak, and some pictures on the internet convince us that isn't always forthcoming. The thing that really sells us is the jizz; the low to the ground pose depicted in the book is identical to how it's sitting in our images. A late tick; not as late as Pondside's Gropper, mind!

We roar back into the campsite at 10:30pm, widely disregarding the 10pm curfew and the plea for quiet. Bad luck static/motorised caravanners, you'll just have to salve your ears with the beautiful view in the morning.