Bird Brained.

One of the things that peiople ask us when we tell them we're intending to spend two weeks by the side of a loch three and a half miles from the nearest street lamp and twenty miles from the nearest shop with no internet and no TV signal is "What on Earth are you going to do?"

For the most part, I have to say that the honest answer is "We'll spend a lot of time looking at the view." Because, seriously, LOOK AT IT!!!!!!!!

We woke up to this every day for a fortnight. What more do you need?

I'll acknowledge that even we don't spend all day everyday gazing at the horizon though. As you already know if you've been reading this blog for any time at all, you'll know that we go out and eat a lot of lunch, and we visit a fair few museums and castles and such.

But not when we're at Grummore. Grummore is a place for taking it easy. For sitting around. So, what do we do?

Well, a lot of people spend time fishing. I'm not a fisherman myself, but I've seen enough fish caught there to understand that there's some good fishing to be had on Loch Naver. To fish away from the site you need to get a permit from the Strathnaver Fisheries, but you can fish from the shore of the site as much as you like.

But as I said, we don't do that.

What we do is watch the birds.

Strathnaver is a magnet for our avian friends. As I've mentioned before, all you have to do is put a bit of seed out to attract every chaffich for miles around.

And they just kept getting fatter...

The loch is also home to rarer species. We've been privillaged to see pairs of Black Throated Divers cruising along the water in early spring. These sleek aquatic birds are summer visitors, migrating in

Yes, I know. It's a terrible photo. What can I say? The little bugger wouldn't stay still!

from wintering grounds around the Mediterranian. You're unlikely to see them on land - they're perfectly adapted to swimming, but their legs are so far back on their bodies they really struggle to walk.

They can be difficult to spot on the water too. They sit very low on the surface, so if there's any swell at all they just disappear behind the waves. Combine that with the fact that they also spend a lot of their time below the waves (they're not called "divers" for nothing!) spotting them can be a bit of a "blink and you'll miss it" experience.

Of course, the Black Throated Diver wasn't the least cooperative photographic subject...

The same is true of their red throated cousins (sort of pictured above). They're not as rare as the black throats, but they're still not common and we've seen a pair at Grummore every year we've been - except this year when the solitary chap pictured above spent a couple of days mooching around on his own before moving on.

We chose to believe that he'd simply arrived earlier than his mate - or perhaps if he really was male, slightly later because he refused to stop for directions and ended up coming the long way 'round - rather than accepting the more probable scenario of his companion not having survived the trip. I would like to pretend that this is because we're inherently optimistic but I suspect the truth is that we're just painfully sentimental.

Russ, the ever helpful site warden, tells us that a pair of Great Northern Divers can also be seen on Loch Naver, but we've never been lucky enough to catch a glimpse. We've similarly struck out catching sight of the White Tailed Sea Eagle which we are assured often makes it's way down the strath from the coast.

We were luckier with the Golden Eagle which is also resident in Strathnaver. We've been keen to see it for as long as we've been visiting but until this latest trip we'd been unsuccessful.

Eagle spotting in the Highlands can get frustrating. Everywhere you go they seem to have seen one "last week" or "yesterday" or even "just this morning", but never "oh yes, it's behind you!". Add to that the fact that buzzards, which are superficially similar in outline, although about half the size, are almost literally ten a penny and you have a recipe for spending whole days staring at the sky, occasionally getting excited before realising "nah, it's just a buzzard".

And I thought Red Throated Divers were elusive...

To be honest, eagle spotting is a lot like watching golf - hours and hours of staring at empty sky looking in vain for a little black dot that always turns out to be where you're not actually looking at the time.

In the end, we were actually standing lochside with a couple of fellow caravanners bemoaning the fact that we had never managed to see so much as an eagle feather, let alone the whole bird, when one soared lazily over our heads, and then on down the loch and over the horizon.


It's funny. Often when you build something up into a real quest when you finally achieve your goal it can feel a little anti climactic.

Not this.

This was every bit as magnificent as I'd imagined. The wingspan of an adult golden eagle can be over seven feet - more than two feet wider than I am tall* and I'd be prepared to bet that from splayed wingtip to splayed wingtip this example was at the larger end of the spectrum. It was like watching a house door glide effortlessly above us, silent as a trappist grave. One this is certain - having seen the real thing there is no way we'll ever look at a buzzard and wonder if it's an eagle.

Sadly, however stately its flight appeared to be, actually getting it into the field of view of the camera proved impossible - the picture above is the best shot we got, and as you can see, the eagle is not in it so you'll have to take our word that it was there. Don't be too hard on our photographic failure though - when they're not in a rush golden eagles soar at about thirty miles per hour, which made this a rapidly moving target against an almost featureless sky.

We'll do better next time I promise.

The golden eagle was pretty much the ornathological highlight of the trip. In the warden's office there is a fabulous photograph of an osprey catching a trout in the loch opposite the site which was taken last year, but we were a bit early of ospreys when we were there - maybe next time...

We don't just  watch birds, but they don't half make the view more interesting. And we're still holding out for the White Tailed Sea Eagle. Come back next week for more info on things to do in the highlands without electronic gadgets!







*Yes, I'm five foot six. Yes, I'm a shortarse.