Charleston House overlooks the harbour at Gairloch.  Sleeps 10 and 1 pet welcome.

Available for 4 night short breaks or longer stays.

The hide I like the best is at Udale Bay,  mainly because the birds can be quite close in especially if they are feeding on the tidal water flowing between the  hide and the large area of saltmarsh.  An added bonus is to look at the edge of the trees to the left of the hide as there is always the chance of seeing a  roe deer.  As for the birds there are often mute swans close to  and just occasionally whooper swans.  The last time I was in the hide there were two adult whooper swans  with three young birds from last year still showing many brownish feathers.  These will be birds that bred in Iceland and they will take the long journey back, in just one flight, some time in March.

Whilst there may be birds active on the flowing water most of the birds viewed from  the hide at Udale will be on the area of saltmarsh.   Many of the waders such as redshank, curlew, oystercatcher and occasional bar-tailed godwits will be resting  on the higher ground especially if the tide is full.  There will be a lot of preening going on whilst others may be sleeping.  They are resting  before, when the tide ebbs, they can once again gather and feed on the rich mudflats in the bay.  The ducks may be mallard, teal, wigeon and a few shelduck the latter looking so colourful, both male and females.   With most ducks the male is much more colourful than the female as the latter may need plumage that will blend in with their surroundings   when they are on open nests, often on the  ground.  The shelduck mainly nests in burrows in the ground or tree holes so the females do not need this camouflage.

From the  Udale and Nigg hides there is always the  chance of seeing a peregrine falcon as some of these birds   of prey seem to spend the winter along the coasts around the Highlands  preying on small duck and waders. The female peregrine is the larger of the sexes and so tends to take larger prey.  At Udale and Nigg the peregrines will take such birds as redshank, lapwings, teal and wigeon.   Sometimes these will be taken by the classic dive, called a stoop, as the bird hurtles down towards the intended prey.  At other times the peregrine will try and outfly birds by its sheer speed.  All this often happens at great speed and the first the observer will know is when  the ducks and waders suddenly rise up in panic and the peregrine will strike so quickly it is often missed by anyone looking on.   What is surprising is just how many times these birds are unsuccessful in their hunting flights.

There was one other surprise on the duck front for the year and that was one of the very few new birds for our garden.  One morning I had idly  glanced down at the few mandarin ducks  on the pond on a number of occasions.  Then for some reason I looked closer and suddenly realised that one of the birds was a wood duck, often called a Carolina duck.  It was a splendid  male and eventually it walked up with the mandarins to where I had been putting  out mixed grain for them.  It stayed a short while and we have not seen it again.  It was presumably  from a local collection but there have been known records of what could have been migrants.

The biggest disappointment  of the year was undoubtedly  the lack of butterflies in most areas with very few species up to their normal numbers.    In the extensive dunes just east of Nairn for example, where we could see ten species in a day, we only found three and those only  in ones or twos.  In our acre paddock we could expect species in double figures for the year  whereas we only recorded three, possibly four.  Only the Scotch argus seemed anywhere near their normal numbers but even they were down.   One can only wonder how this will affect this coming season.  The only boost was the number of red admirals at the back end suggesting they might now be successfully hibernating as  adults and surviving.

On the mammals front there was a great triumph as the “Atlas of Highland Land Mammals”, edited by Ro Scott, was published by the Highland Biological Recording Group.    If you have not obtained a copy they are   £8.50, including the p & p, so just send a cheque payable to HRGB to Ro Scott, Peddieston Cottage, Cromarty, IV11 8XX.  I can assure you that  it will  more than please you.  On  the personal  front the mammal of the year has to be one in the paddock close to the house.  We had been putting out mixed grain overnight for the wild ducks to come up at first light and feed undisturbed.  Looking down from the bedroom window at dusk one evening there was a badger feeding  on the grain only about few yards  from the house.  Not only that but it was joined a few minutes later by another and they stood gobbling up the food as fast as they could.  Perhaps to put this time of the year in 2012 into perspective, records for 2011  indicated there was frog’s spawn near Lochinver and on the Black Isle in the third  week in February so not long now……

Some wildlife such as the frogs, toads and lizards just go into a type of hibernation.   Even then there is a difference in  coping.   Toads will generally all leave their breeding sites such as lochans and ponds and find holes or crevices to stay.  Frogs may try and stay actually under water and take in enough oxygen through their skin.  Their problem is just how cold it gets as if the water is not deep enough it may freeze completely which is a disaster for them.  However despite the winter weather to come there is the thought that there will be the first frogs’ spawn in late February so not many weeks to go!

The problem of survival for wildlife is one that many of us see every day in our gardens that attract large numbers of birds particularly small birds  from siskins to chaffinches and greenfinches to blackbirds all gathering  to get what food we put out.   Gone are the  rivalries between birds as the most important activity is to find food.  In my garden I put out, daily, supplies in  a range of feeders offering such food as niger, sunflower hearts, peanuts, mixed grain and suet.  Blue tits, great tits and coal tits are normally the earliest and latest birds as they are very small and need so much food almost constantly to keep going.  In the last few years larger birds such as woodpigeons and pheasants have been coming into garden even in Inverness.  Pheasants can be quite tame in both rural and urban gardens and the dark female pheasant I took in the photograph is typical.   She was walking  around in the snow just waiting for some mixed grain to be put out.

What is important, especially at this time of the year, is continuity of feeding. If you are going away even for a couple of days it is important to either put out more food than usual or get a friend or neighbour to top up the feeders.  Birds need a daily intake of food and if you suddenly stop they will have difficulty in finding another source and may die.   Water too is very important as they need it to wash and keep their feathers in maximum condition to keep them warm in the low temperatures.

The best book for studying garden birds is “Garden Birds and Wildlife” by Mike Toms and Paul Sterry at £20.

Cones on various types of conifers attract animals and a few birds and when they attack them on the trees the cones often fall to the ground and can readily be examined.  I regularly visit a group of tall, old Scots pines at the east end of Loch Farr in Strathnairn  to look at the cones.   Red squirrels attack the cones with some vigour and only leave the core with a tell-tale bulge of scales at the end.  A cautionary note here as wood mice do the same but the end result of their activities has a  much smoother appearance.  The red squirrels will often gather the cones together on a  feeding point such as the old stump of a felled tree where a pile of cones can sometimes be found.   At the Loch Farr trees there is also the added bonus of crossbills but they leave the cones looking almost whole with just the  scales opened up for the birds to reach the seed with their crossed beaks specially designed for this.

If you are fortunate enough to come across hazel trees that have  nuts on them there are  various ways to tell which animals  have attacked these to get into the kernels.   Red squirrels find them very attractive and in one or two places it has led to their downfall.  One example is on the south side of Loch Ness running south from Dores.  Most of the hazel trees are on the loch side of the road right along the banks of the water edge.  To get at this food source means  the red  squirrels have to cross the busy  road and risk collision with traffic.  There have been two ways in which this has been partly solved.  One is the signs on the sides  of the road warning drivers that there may be red squirrels crossing the road.  Another is ropes slung between the overhanging trees so that the animals can walk or scamper across.  Both methods have been partly successful but there are still a few red squirrels  that meet their fate on this road.  There is one interesting record from there in that one day someone watched a buzzard try to take a red squirrel  off one of the overhanging ropes although apparently it did not succeed.    The red squirrels use their lower teeth to gnaw into the tip of the hazel nut and then insert the upper teeth downwards so that the nut splits open.    In contrast wood mice will gnaw a neat hole in the side of the nut to get at the kernel.   All signs to help the “nature detective”.

15% off any weeks booking between 31st March and 1st September 2012.

Pets welcome.

Last week I was sat in  a busy Inverness car park  with cars coming and going and a hooded crow  was mainly simply scavenging for any scraps  left lying around by people.  The bird  also went up to stationary vehicles and took insects off radiators and bumpers as well as wheels.    In one corner of the car park,  outside a large pet shop, the house sparrows had a different technique as a dozen or more were helping themselves to mixed grain.  The bags of the seed were in piles outside  the shop and when the bags were moved occasionally a bag would split and  the house sparrows had a field day.   There used to be several house sparrows actually in this particulalr pet  store but presumable they were moved in some way on health grounds.   In another large store I looked in last year some starlings took a different  approach.  On the section where the garden bird food was sold there were suet balls and mixed seed feeders  hanging up on display and six starlings were helping themselves, actually inside the large store.   The birds completely  ignored shoppers  passing within  a few feet of them.

The crows in car parks look almost arrogant  as they strut around no doubt feeling quite safe and getting very used to such surroundings.    Elsewhere in the Highlands no other bird has been  so relentlessly pursued in attempts to curb its numbers and distribution.  There are  even traps, the now famous Larsen traps, that were designed with these birds in mind. Despite such levels of persecution the crows  still seem quite common.   In Inverness there appears to be two different types of crows, one of which is the  hooded crow with its typical grey and black plumage as shown in the photograph.   At the other extreme is the carrion crow  and this is more  or less black all over.   The two birds used to be classed as different species although   commonly known to interbreed and the offspring were fertile and the result was a mixture  of the two forms.   Then  after further  studies it was decided, in 2002   , that they were in fact two separate species.   Interestingly if you go to Aberdeen you will mainly only see   the all black carrion   crows whilst on the west coast it is mainly  the hooded crows.  In the middle of these two ranges is the hybrid zone where you can see birds  showing variation in their plumage.  This zone happens to run north to south through the eastern Highlands including Inverness which is why we get both species in the  car parks.

Other much smaller migrants have not gone un-noticed and these include the very large numbers of fieldfares and redwings, both members of the thrush family, that have invaded our shores.  Normally both these birds will stay in the Highlands  for some weeks gorging themselves mainly on the rowan berries although they will  take many others such as hawthorn and even windfall apples.  However the berry crop has been a disaster in the Highlands this year and most of the birds have moved on.  Interestingly the redwings will have come from breeding grounds in Iceland where most of them nest on the ground.  The fieldfares, in contrast,  will have come from  Scandinavia.    Redwings also breed in Scandinavia but ringing  has shown that for some reason these birds tend to move to southern Britain and farther south in Europe.

There is another member of the thrush family that we tend to take for granted and this is the blackbird.  Blackbirds that breed in the Highlands tend to stay there all the year round although there is movement in the Autumn and Spring to and from the higher ground to lower ground.  Blackbirds that breed on the continent  tend to move to the UK for the winter and many arrive along the Scottish coast from the north and east.  Many of us will have seen this influx in our gardens in the last few weeks.   I recall that one morning  a few weeks ago there was a sudden influx of blackbirds into the garden.  One immature bird I photographed was feeding on an apple I had stuck it a tree They had just appeared overnight and I counted 14 in just one small area of the garden.    What was significant was that the majority of them were males but instead of the usual yellow beak they were all black.   This is typical of the birds from Europe especially from Finland, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.   The orange yellow beak  and ring round the eye will not be attained by these birds until they return to their breeding grounds to the east and north east.

Some blackbirds can develop partly white plumage especially as they get older.  One extreme of this is the totally white albino bird and if it is a true albino it will often have pink eyes.  At the other extreme are blackbirds that  have a few white feathers which tend to spread as  they get older.

Whilst the birds may be more or less confined to the coast in the winter months, during the summer they are widespread inland  and they sometimes breed in the most unlikely places.   A good example is the flat roofs of the Inverness Academy school.  They can nest there because, unlike the young of other waders, the chicks rely on food brought in by the parents.  Successful nests have been known in a flower bed just outside the terminal at Inverness airport and on the edge of the car park at the Dingwall Mart.   They can also be found only inches from the  tarmac on some country roads near  rivers where the strip of shingle must remind them of the upper parts of a beach on the coast.  I took the photograph of a bird with beak tucked under its wing feathers as it sat on top of a bus shelter near Croy.     Whilst some stay on the coast and breed others will move far inland and will nest on open fields sometimes along with lapwings and curlews.   The chicks are well camouflaged as a narrow pale line of feathers behind the head makes the head and body look like two small pebbles.   In that way they can outwit the ever present hooded and carrion crows.

Ringing birds has given us a greater awareness of what oystercatchers do at various times of the year.  Many of the oystercatchers are caught at this time of the year and in the winter when they gather in their large flocks in the firths.  The Highland Ringing  Group rings around 200 to 300 a year  and this is where much of the information on them in the Highlands has been obtained.  Such was the case with one that was brought to me in March 2004 having been found near Farr just south of Inverness.  The bird had hatched in 1976 and was first ringed near Inverness in 1978.  It was re-ringed, because the original ring was worn,  at Alterlie Point east of Inverness in 1991.  When the bird was given to me it was still alive but I had to put it down as it had two shattered legs.  At its death the   bird had lived for 28 years  which is old  for a wild bird although not unknown as the longest oystercatcher known was 31 years old.    It is interesting that this flamboyant bird has not captured the imagination of the Highland poets such as Norman MacCaig.     Scots names include Sea Pilot and Shelder  whilst the commonest Gaelic name is Gille-Brighde meaning Servant of St. Bridget.