Silver Lining

 Still on mainland Scotland, when I should be on Sanday. Which is definitely not the silver lining, as lovely as Caithness is.

And because the forecast is still bad for tomorrow morning the ferry from Scrabster has been delayed until 1 pm, I'll not be arriving in Stromness until after the afternoon boat to Sanday has already departed from Kirkwall 🙄

So now rerebooked on that ferry for Wednesday morning, and what was meant to be 11 nights there has become 9.

But I have at least made it to Thurso, and because of the delays I had my silver lining of a brilliant morning birding around Loch Morlich near Aviemore.

Had no real expectations, given the time of year (one of the reasons I didn't bother to factor in time for it in the journey) but had hoped at least to find Crested Tit.

It took a while, but saw four in the end, helpfully vocal in the frequent tit and treecreeper flocks.

But it definitely wasn't the highlight of the walk. Rather unexpectedly (although no doubt it's perfectly normal, just so hard to know when it's something so rare where you live) had several flocks of Pink-footed Geese flying over, totalling well over 250 birds. Even though I expect to see loads on Sanday, and even had them over Charnock Richard Services yesterday, it was so evocative to have them calling over the pine woods in the murky weather.

Also had an added treat, when one of my favourite bird calls alerted me to a flock of seven Whooper Swans dropping on to the loch.

Off in the distance in this one, but I thought it was quite evocative

After a while, with more pinkfeet flocks over (all seemingly heading straight over the Cairngorms: they would've been even more amazing up on the mountain tops!) and Goldeneye and Grey Wagtail added, I heard the distinctive "chup chup" flight call of a crossbill, and potentially a good one too. Certainly the call was deeper than the crossbills I'm used to from the New Forest, but I'm well aware of the confusions and complications and controversy.

After a short while I managed to find a couple of perched birds, and whilst the light was poor and they were typically high in a pine, the photos I got (and have cropped and lightened) of the female perched in the open certainly suggest a bill fitting the requirements for Scottish Crossbill, whatever that may be, and that was supported by the calls - at least three others were heard calling (all consistently similar) and seen only in flight.

Comments are certainly welcome though!

 

All the same bird

Then, as I was heading back to the car, the Whoopers started trumpeting and headed off after a lap of the loch took them past the Cairngorm visitor centre

Then up towards the cloud base

A fine way to end an excellent morning.