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Visitors descend in droves to capture area’s magic





A garden warbler. (Russell F. Spencer)
A garden warbler. (Russell F. Spencer)

WHAT a month May was! We started with high fire risk and ended with snow on the tops again.

This time last year we were just saying goodbye to the longest-lying snow most of us could remember. Now all we can see from the strath are the last remnants on the steep ground at the tops of corries.

Occasionally, the cloud clears and the new snow on the very tops can be seen again. The bright sunshine and dark clouds of passing showers has produced some spectacular lighting, rewarding photographers and landscape-watchers.

It’s easy to forget just what a profound effect this area – the Highlands in general – has on the city-dweller, even as they pass through and gaze out of the vehicle window.

I was hearing two of them discussing how delicious and fresh the air felt, how bright the scene and what a profoundly restful effect they felt by breaking their journey for lunch on their way north from Glasgow to Inverness.

They went on later (with others) to give the best performance I’ve heard live of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, music full of the joy of being in the countryside, complete with a hair-raising storm scene.

Three more groups of visitors have been much in evidence this month, and it is surprising how little they interact.

First is the annual sporadic influx of coast-to-coast challenge walkers. Most of them are organised into an official event, setting off from the West Coast last week and congregating eventually at Montrose, many long foot-weary road miles later.

I met some camping near Glen Feshie last year while I was making a long walk in the opposite direction. The weather has been much less kind to them this year, but they will have been glad to have had most of it at their backs.

I wonder if in their goal-oriented determination to finish their route they even notice the main attraction for the second group.

Do they see much of the amazing bird and plant-life that the visiting naturalists come here to enjoy?

A goldeneye. (Ben Hall/RSPB Images)
A goldeneye. (Ben Hall/RSPB Images)

We have a major hotel in Grantown catering especially for naturalists, and who can afford to ignore them when this is such an evergreen source of visitors to the strath?

Comments from my brother who came independently last week are very revealing about what the keen end of this group wants.

They want to be out from early light to late, they prefer wild places where there is little in the way of facilities and, of course, they want to see good wildlife.

He was pleased to be able to tell us we had a garden warbler singing in our garden. We had put it down as a blackcap, which we had also seen, but a bit of diligent observation by my wife rewarded her with a view of a dowdy brownish little bird with the voice of liquid gold which is what our visitor recognised.

We didn’t see my brother for most of the time he was here. He made two visits to Strathdearn – which most visitors call the Findhorn valley, or even "Eagle Alley" – to seek the elusive super-raptor.

These visitors are well aware that this area may be developed for wind farms, and wind generators are notorious for killing eagles. Their lack of enthusiasm is understandable.

For me, Strathdearn has many happy memories of watching terns and dippers on the river and ring ouzel at Coignafearn, then looking for raptors over the tops on the way to Loch Ruthven, which is another rich birdwatching site.

Mountain birds are usually the biggest challenge for birdwatchers because, along with crested tit, these are the only birds you won’t see anywhere else.

Dotterel do stop off on migration through Britain, but they are far more reliable on the high tops. They had their earliest arrival this year for many years – coinciding with the latest Easter Sunday ever.

Ptarmigan, dotterel and snow bunting are often just too remote for many of the less-fit birdwatchers to find, though we have been lucky to see all three on this year’s daily Walk at the Top on Cairn Gorm.

For many birdwatchers and other naturalists wanting an uncomplicated mountain walk, the choice is between Cairn Gorm and Carn Ban Mor.

Many birdwatchers head up to the Cairn Gorm plateau near Lurcher’s Gully, a 450 metre climb in under four kilometres.

Carn Ban Mor has its adherents despite a longer 650 metre climb in nearly six kilometres from Glen Feshie. The path here is being rebuilt to something like the original stalkers’ path, which will help to protect the habitat and make for a much more pleasant walking surface.

The third group of visitors here in large numbers are students and school pupils out on field trips. These groups are very welcome, and keep many of the outdoor centres very busy at this time of year. Saying that it is important to give youngsters experience of the outdoors is stating the obvious.

As I said, it is surprising how little these groups interact. I was asked by one of a group of elderly people with binoculars whether I was a birdwatcher or a hiker.

As we were on Cairn Gorm’s Fiacaill a’Choire Chais, I was able truthfully to say "both", but I wondered what the difference was that he had in mind.

One of his party was carrying his belongings in a supermarket bag and sat down every few minutes. I should have said I was studying human responses to adversity!

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AN ADDED fascination and draw for visitors to the Loch Garten Osprey Centre is the somewhat bizarre antics of another nesting bird sitting on her own eggs.

Pictures are being beamed to a screen, from within a large nest box in which a goldeneye duck has chosen to nest. Richard Thaxton RSPB Scotland site manager at Loch Garten, said: "The female goldeneye took up residence a fortnight or so ago and began laying her eggs in the box a few days after.

"Goldeneye naturally nest in large holes in trees but will also readily use nest boxes. Here at the Abernethy reserve we have several such boxes – many that have been here since the 1980s – which has enabled these hole-nesting ducks to establish themselves.

"Only this box though, is wired to a camera, giving this unique opportunity for insight into this secretive aspect of goldeneye breeding behaviour."

The eggs are a beautiful duck-egg blue/green. When she is ready to start incubating, she will pluck down feathers from her own breast, to line the nest and keep them snug, literally pulling a down duvet over her clutch before leaving the box to go and feed and bathe on Loch Garten.

She has laid four eggs so far, and may go on to lay anything up to a further four or more. Mr Thaxton said that some clutches can be huge – he once checked a box that contained 26 eggs!

He said this though was almost certainly an instance of what is referred to as "egg-dumping", whereby immature female goldeneye, though able to produce eggs, are infertile and the birds are just going through the motions of egg laying and can do so in several boxes.

So the clutch of 26 eggs was almost certainly laid by two or even three female goldeneye. Some clutches are not incubated. In fact between 25% and 30% of clutches are not incubated.

Incubation lasts 27 to 32 days. All being well the eggs will hatch simultaneously. The chicks will only be in the box for between 24 and 36 hours after hatching before leaving the box and taking like ducks to water.

They are not fed by the female and so need to get to Loch Garten in order to feed. They feed by diving to collect invertebrates especially small water snails and crustaceans.

Goldeneye have only nested regularly in UK since about 1970, though a pair nested in Cheshire in 1931 and 1932, in a rabbit burrow.

They are rare breeders with between 100 and 150 occupied nests each year. Nests can nest up to one kilometre from water and can be 10 or more feet above the ground, which means that when the chicks exit the boxes they have to take a leap of faith into the unknown, not knowing what lies beneath, but not necessarily water.

Being very light balls of fluff, they waft and parachute to the ground, bouncing on impact but come to no harm.

Apparently, the notion to provide suitably-sized nestbox to encourage goldeneye and other hole-nesting ducks to nest, came from northern Europe and northern Canada, in the days when timber from forestry operations was often floated down rivers to the mills.

The lumberjacks, moving the logs downstream, knowing where they had put up duck nest boxes, then knew they could be guaranteed a fresh duck egg for breakfast as the travelled down river!

We hope all goes well for this female Golden Eye and that visitors can enjoy this rare insight into the resident box- nesting duck.

Take a peak at http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/l/lochgarten/goldeneyewebcam.aspx

This month’s Country Diary was submitted by Nic Bullivant, Head Ranger of Cairngorm Mountain Ranger Service, and Mr Richard Thaxton, RSBP site warden at Loch Garten Osprey Centre. If you would like to report something for inclusion in the Country Diary, please get in touch with Nic at (01479) 861327.


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