Our summer family holiday this year was yet another in the long line of holidays going to the far flung corners of this country. This time it was to the Isle of Mull as we have always liked the rugged beauty of the west coast of Scotland. We'd booked a cottage right by the sea at a location called Grasspoint which is a point on the south east corner of the island looking out across the Sound of Mull back towards the mainland. We'd chosen the first week of August for this holiday. In order to be able to insert the many photos that I took I am breaking up this trip report into small chunks to accommodate the limit of five photos per posting.
As usual we broke up the long journey north by stopping off in the Lake District to stay with relatives and we decided this year to go a day early and actually to spend a day in the Lakes. It was rather late in the year to see the ospreys at Bassenthwaite as they'd already flown the nest and could be anywhere on the lake and surrounding area but on a family walk through the pine forests up to the upper viewing point we were lucky to find one of the birds back on the nest, presumably a juvenile waiting to be fed. I even managed a distant digiscoped photo though there was a lot of heat haze and wind to make things difficult.
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Osprey at view point at Bassenthwaite Lake, Cumbria
I did manage one other evening walk up to the lower viewpoint where the nest is not actually visible but there is a partial view of the Lake. From here there were lots of stock doves flying over and coal tits, greenfinches and chaffinches visiting the feeders. I also saw a distant peregrine fly over the lake being mobbed by a lapwing. A red squirrel, a speciality of the area, was also seen near the feeders.
The journey up to the Isle of Mull was largely uneventful though on the ferry I did manage to see a few black guillemots which are know to nest at Oban from where the ferry departs. The cottage itself turned out to be functional but rather shabby and a bit damp. However this was more than made up for by its fantastic location overlooking the mouth of Loch Don and out to sea with a small jetty a few yards away. There were large hills in the distance across the Loch and also behind the cottage and several small island out in front of us on the far side of the Loch mouth as well as a distant lighthouse. Within a couple of hours of arriving I'd spotted my first white-tailed sea eagle sitting on a ridge behind us before it flew off out into the Sound of Mull. There were also a pair of knot on one of the islands opposite the house, which apparently are somewhat uncommon passage waders for Mull.