Loch Lunndaidh

It's been months since the last time we walked the track which rises from Drummuie, through the forestry to Loch Lunndaidh so we rectified that this morning, on a day of almost flawless sunshine and a light breeze cool enough to make walking pleasant.

With spring now well on its way, the main thing we were looking for was, as always, this year's first of each species, and we started off well with several....

....dog violets ranging from this colour through to a much darker purple. Then we saw several 'first' birds, including....

....a welcome sighting of the first wheatear of the year, looking exceedingly smart as he flaunted himself on top of a fence post, and....

....a second which, being darker and pinker, was very likely to be a female.

Then we saw....

....both a male stonechat and....

....his slightly dowdier wife, using gorse buses as vantage points. Stonechats are here all winter but we haven't seen any where we usually do, on the tall grass stalks along the coast. 

Finally, we found the first tadpoles in a shallow ditch by the side of the track, their situation looking very precarious as much of the water had evaporated and we have no rain forecast for several days.