We met local wildlife guide Steve Duffield (http://www.western-isles-wildlife.com) in the Lodge car park at 9am. A few minutes after we set off, we had a good view of a short-eared owl flying about. Apparently they’re common here. We drove to an old pier near Lochmadday and spent an hour and a half watching a mother and cub otter. The otters spent a while on a small islet, the mother fishing and bringing food for the cub: crabs and fish. They’d both spend time on and off the islet, and when feeding seemed not to be bothered by our presence. We watched from the pier, and then scrambled down over seaweedy rocks to get a closer view. Steve pointed out the high-pitched call of the young otter, which we would have otherwise thought was a bird calling.
The rest of the day was excellent. Steve drove us around North Uist, stopping every few minutes. Some of the things we saw: short-eared owls, hen harriers, distant golden and white-tailed eagles, arctic skuas. We walked out over the machair to a deserted white beach, sea emerald blue.
A whole bunch of ravens and gulls were on piles of sand at a plant for processing fish farm waste. A new building nearby was due to house the processing indoors soon – apparently some people complain about the smell. Seemed fine to me, but maybe we were upwind.
Skylarks were everywhere: singing in the sky and flying up from the path in front of us. We heard a single corncrake calling.
Walking out on the machair, Steve was great at identifying all of the plants: pyramidal orchids, heath spotted orchids, northern marsh orchids, lesser butterfly orchids, bog asphodel, ladies bedstraw, wild pansy, silverweed, charlock, tufted vetch, wild carrot (we pulled one up, roots smelled like carrot) and many more that I’ve forgotten.
We passed a colony of (supposedly) solitary miner bees, and saw corn buntings.
Steve is from Burnley, but has been in Uist for 14 years. He’s good company and very knowledgeable. He showed us otter spraints and a holt, and rocks with green algae on them, which grows there because of the regular otter sprainting. He took us to a holt, and showed us otter footprints in the sand beneath it.
We drove up to the military radio globe (one of three built to track the missiles from the range on South Uist) to look for eagles.
One distant sighting of a white-tailed eagle.
Back at Langass Lodge at 5pm.
After dinner R walked down to the loch. Buzzard and red deer on the opposite banks. Six-spot burnet moth on this side.
There were some midges.