Scotland - Day 5

The next morning we woke at a reasonable time and had Hare in the garden of the B&B which was a nice start. From here we took the short journey to Finnport for the ferry to Iona to hopefully hear and see Corncrake.

When we got off the boat we could hear them almost straight away. We crept up on the first bird and eventually had brief views and it ran between iris beds. We decided to mooch around the island a bit and ended up finding Twite, Grasshopper Warbler, Cuckoo and then Matt managed to find a 1st Summer Glaucous Gull which was pretty cool. When passing Iona Primary School we heard another Corncrake which sounded like it was out in the open...nect thing Matt was shouting at me and Mick that the Bl**dy thing was in the playground! Absolutely awesome views and it even called out in the open...

Corncrake - Iona

Corncrake - Iona

Once we were off Iona we got told by some of the locals that there was a huge storm brewing and forecast for later in the day. We didn't want to be stuck on Mull so we decided to try and get an early ferry and get back over towards Cairngorm.

We got the 3.00pm ferry back to Oban and had an amazing return leg to the ferry crossing. We managed to find quite a few Puffins which we awesome until Matt shouted I have a black-capped Skua on the water...luckily I got straight onto the bird and Matt got his camera out and photographed a full summer plumaged Long-tailed Skua...WOW what an end to the visit to Mull.

Back on the mainland we headed to Insh Marshes RSPB in the hope of hearing Spotted Crake but sadly we couldn't locate any singing birds. We did however have an amazing experience with tons of Common Snipe displaying over our heads.