Moray Firth - Day 2

Chanonry Point

Dunlin

Dunlin

Turnstones

Pink-feet fly pass

Wheatear and Rock Pipit

Common Gull

Udale Bay Nature Reserve

Red-breasted Merganser

Red-breasted Merganser

Shag

Flock of Scaup

End of a great days birding

After an over indulgent breakfast, quite a common theme, we headed north to the Black Isle. The Black Isle is not an island, but a peninsula, surrounded on three sides by water – the Cromarty Firth to the north, the Beauly Firth to the south and the Moray Firth to the east.

Our first stop was Chanonry Point a beautiful setting by a light house. A Wheatear could be seen in the same scope view as a Rock Pipit giving us a great start whilst the jetty held Shags and Turnstones. A nice flock of Dunlin treated us to some super views before landing close by on the beach whilst out in the bay there was Red-throated Divers, Razorbill, Guillemots, Black Guillemots and a selection of gulls.

After crossing the bridge to Udale Bay Nature Reserve the tide come in pushing large numbers of waterfowl and wading birds. A small spit of land was simply covered with Oystercatchers, Knot, Wigeon, Lapwing, Bar-Tailed Godwits, Golden Plover, Grey Heron and three Pink-footed Geese. Out on the water there were no less than 7 Slavonian Grebes and a small flock of Red-breasted Merganser. In the stubble field behind our first Hooded Crow was on display. This was the first of many throughout the rest of the trip.

Heading round the coast we came across a flock of 200+ Scaup, an awesome sight whilst there were good numbers of Long-tailed Ducks. The male birds looked awesome in flight along the coast.

A pub lunch on the harbour allowed us to see a large flock of Kittiwakes fly past and 400+ Eider whilst two Rock Pipits flew around the parked cars. With the rest of the party tucking into lunch I located Harbour Porpoises just out of the harbour which were then past by a Great Northern Diver. We did try a late afternoon twitch for a Hoopee but it had moved on hours before but there was a Pale-bellied Brent Goose off shore.

On the evening Alan gave us and the other hotel guests a talk about their tour of Finland and Norway. Most definitely a place to visit in the future !