Mull Musings continued

White-tailed Eagle - Loch Tuath, Mull

After the initial success of finding a Dipper, it must be said it was not well placed and there was very little light available, so premium shots were nigh on impossible to come by. As I alluded last time, that set the scene for the rest of the day and to some extent the rest of the week. In fact the next shots in my sequence were of the late afternoon White-tailed Eagles charter.

Late afternoon weather was fine and some banter in the car park at the Ulva ferry suggested that the two public trips on Martin Keivers’ boat Lady Jayne that day had been very productive. In fact, Martin had passed us as we drove to the ferry and on boarding the boat, his son Alex confirmed it had been a good day and Martin had gone to get more fish.

Soon underway, we were surprised to find that rather than sailing into Loch Na Keal, we headed in the opposite direction to the area of Loch Tuath. Some Black-backed Gulls gave the opportunity to sort the camera settings and practice a few in-flight shots before the main course was served up. We had high expectations for the trip and we weren’t disappointed, having several passes by both male and female birds in some excellent light. We were also amused by a somewhat lazy male bird that preferred to chase a Raven, rather than swoop for the fish. The female put up with this for a short while, but ultimately came in herself and got the fish.

Our previous trip like this had given us some close sightings of Great Northern Divers in breeding plumage and we were hopeful this would be repeated. Alas that was not to be the case and although during the week we did have some sightings along the shore of Loch Na Keal, they were never as close as we had from Lady Jayne in 2015.

The three hour charter soon passed - doesn’t time always pass quickly when the action keeps on coming – and it was time to head back to base for a well-earned dinner.

Next day we toured a few places to see what we could find and the majority of the action was centred on Loch Spelve. It yielded Common Gulls, a particularly confiding, but nonetheless vocal, Oystercatcher, Red-breasted Mergansers, although no Otters. The day was rounded off with some particularly handsome Highland Cattle at Auchnacraig.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, Tuesday was forecast to be a wet day and so it turned out. Naturally it didn’t stop us venturing out, but I have no usable images from the day at all. Visiting Mull one has to be ready for this weather and almost accept it as the norm, but we were experiencing such good weather that it came as a bit of a blow on this trip. Dinner in Tobermory and a discussion about the following day’s plan rounded off Tuesday.

Wednesday dawned bright and back to the weather we had become used to. The plan was to spend some time around the northern part of the island and then move down the east coast calling in at a variety of sites en route. Apart from a couple of landscape opportunities – most notably the old wrecks featured in my last post – there was nothing of any note to report. Almost inevitably we found ourselves back at Loch Spelve where this time we did have some different species to capture. There was a fleeting glimpse of an Otter as it swam along the shoreline, but all attempts to get ahead of it failed and resulted in almost exclusively in shots as it was going away.

The lesson to be learned here is one we all know, but seem to overlook consistently. It’s simply, know where your targets are and spend time patiently waiting for them to come to you. Chase them and you’re lost.

Next time I’ll blog about the Lunga trip for the Puffins, which again was different to our 2015 visit. On that occasion we didn’t do the Staffa part of the trip, but this time we did.