Travel day

For me, a keenly-anticipated holiday can have a bittersweet moment as it becomes a reality. Although I am always ready for some downtime, travelling doesn't usually fill me with the same sense of gladness. This year, my grumpiness was mitigated to obscurity by circumventing a ludicrously early start and treating the rest of the day as continuous birdwatching.

We booked B+B on the mv Hamnavoe, so spent the first night of our holiday berthed in Stromness harbour, which meant that we didn't have to be up at stupid o'clock to pack the car and drive to the ferry.

It also allowed me the opportunity to reprise a motif from a previous blog. Although there wasn't a kitchen sink or a pen involved, I would like to think that Dodie Smith would've approved.

After a smooth crossing of the Pentland Firth, we set off from Scrabster, on the north coast of Caithness, at a leisurely pace, and turning west, not east like the majority of our shipmates.

Just before Melvich, we took a turning south and headed down through Forsinard towards Helmsdale, where we would belatedly pick up the A9 after the throng had careened by. We had tried this route last year, though later in the day, and had been impressed by the amount of birdsong which could be picked up by trundling along with the car windows open. Reckoning that an early start could only ramp up the avian music, we were soon working on our bird list almost too fast for the scribe to annotate it.

Despite not yet being 9am, it was warm, bright and, pleasingly, full of natural sounds. Occasionally we would pull over, step out of the car and just listen and breathe. It was absolutely magical.

 

A distant Cuckoo being mobbed by what looks like a Chaffinch

A normally shy Snipe being brazen in the Halladale River

At Forsinard, we spent a bit of time at the RSPB reserve, and even at this early hour of the day, there were dragonflies and damselflies on the wing.

A Common Lizard basking on the boardwalk

Flow Country

Bogbean flower

Mistle Thrush

Song Thrush

Spotted Flycatcher

We purchased plentiful picnic provender at the ever-reliable Thyme and Plaice in Helmsdale, and munched our way along another detour via Loch Buidhe and Bonar Bridge. Regaining the A9, we nipped into a supermarket at Tain to stock up on holiday necessities, then managed a bit of careening of our own, as we sped by Inverness. As it was such a hot day, just before our destination in Nethybridge, we visited a couple of dragonfly pools for some odo delight, then pootled to our accommodation to unpack. In the evening, a walk around the village and along the river bank brought more rewards.

We'd heard a Reed Bunting earlier in the day; here was a Flag waving

Pignot and Forget-me-nuts

Dipper

A bored Dipper

Last year, we had spent a week in the same cottage and, diligently but fruitlessly, searched the river every day for a sighting of a Dipper. It was therefore something of a relief to find this one so soon, in habitat which looks so perfect for them. I am still no wiser as to how we drew a blank last year.

[Happy sigh]