The online presence of Tim Collier. Photographer, course leader, lecturer and blogger.
Following the forecast over the last few days it was apparent that today was going to be a wet one. Nothing wrong with that, it just adds a different dimension and changes the way you approach the day. Having explored a fair amount of the Island, it felt right that we should move on to the mainland, and we had a particular place in mind.
The forecast was right! Early morning it was threatening and getting darker with the wind beginning to strengthen. I like these conditions even if it can make photography a little challenging.
With the weather still holding and a wet day forecast for the morning, I took the road out to the north of the island again in the afternoon. The white sands of Strand of the Seat were pulling me back, the waders had gone but the waves were turning beautifully on the sands.
In the last couple of weeks I’ve spent some time with the Purple Sandpipers that spend the winter on our rocky shores down here in South Wales, the wintering population of Britain is roughly estimated at about 16,000. They’re a bird that feeds and roosts in the littoral zone and often as close to the surf as possible, rarely venturing above the high tide line.
Another trip to the magical Dinas again on the weekend, this time with the Glamorgan Bird Club. Friendly faces and always good to chat with like minded folk.
Over a difficult summer I’ve not been able to do half as much work as I would have wanted, Covid and other problems have meant far fewer hours out and about, but when in Liverpool, helping out with mum after the first lockdown, I was able, on a good number of evenings, to spent time with Swifts.
One of the best moments of my recent dawn chorus walks was coming across a Song Thrush that, apart from the odd interruption by a Blackbird, sang for well over half an hour. It was also pretty apparent that it was slightly down the pecking order as it ceased singing each time the Blackbird came along and dropped down a couple of feet from its high perch!
Mull, capricious, at times turbulent and always always changeable. This is an island of light and shade, of brilliance and foreboding often shifting between these extremes within minutes. It is a place that draws you in, holds you and tugs at you as you leave.
Two fine birds at two very different locations in the morning and afternoon; Kumlien’s Gull at Port Talbot and Great Grey Shrike at Garwnant, and both showed really well.
The Farne Islands; a group of between 20 and 30 islands, how many depends on the state of the tide; one and a half to nearly five miles off the mainland; resistant igneous Dolerite; home to over 100,000 seabirds. I’d not visited them since childhood and had very mixed emotions after standing on them for the first time in over 50 years.
The Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is not an easy bird to see or photograph. I’ve been to quite a few locations over the years where they are known to breed (and it’s never easy to be 100% sure of that!) but never even caught sight of them. ‘A shy bird of the high canopy’ is often how bird books will describe them.
When Tom Kistruck, the RSPB warden at Ynys-hir, told me that the most recent count of the Greenland White-fronted Geese on the Dyfi estuary, not far from the town of Machynlleth, had grown from the eleven that had been reported before Christmas to thirteen, I had a feeling that the number might prove to be as unlucky as I’d been the previous couple of days. I’m not generally a superstitious person but at times like this you sort of begin to wonder.
Handa is an island that simply tugs you back. It has it all; a wonderful evocative sense of loneliness (no Skomer hoards here – although it is still possible to get a quiet spot if you walk in the opposite direction to the Wick); a chance to get close to the ‘pirates’ of the bird world; archaeology and ancient history and a landscape of low coastal reefs to seriously imposing 100 metre Torridonian sandstone cliffs.Continue reading
This was a place we found by simply driving to the end of what was possible. We’d been down all the small roads off the road north from Kinlochbervie; Oldshoremore, Droman, the wonderful Bagh a’ Phollain.
You sometimes get days when everything seems to be just right, I remember one at Firemore Sands some years ago when the dramatic weather played back drop to ten Black-throated Divers, Gannets diving in the bay, terns all around and surfing Red-breasted Mergansers. I had another one recently on our journeys around Scotland.
There are certain birds that simply push all the buttons; for many they may be birds of prey, Divers, (see post here) Puffins, Gannets, and perhaps the diminutive Goldcrest and Firecrest.
One of the star species on any trip up to the north of Scotland must be the Divers. The small lochans around Lochinver can be productive for the Black-throated, whist the Red-throated can be virtually relied upon to be in Scourie Bay. It’s not uncommon to encounter up to four at the same time here.Continue reading
Today was was a long sail; ten hours, with a lunch stop in Loch Scavaig,looking into the heart of the Cuillin.Continue reading
