July 5, 1996
Rainy and cool
After our late night, we slept in and went down to breakfast at 9:00 (as we’d promised John the night before). When leaving, John bid us a fond farewell, and gifted me with a framed poster (he took it right off his wall!) that had the lyrics to a song called “The Highland Welcome.” Very touching! He is such a lovely man.
After leaving the hotel, our first stop was to explore an eagle aerie that John’s son, Duncan, had told us about. This early morning walk took us through some sheep fields . . . it’s still so funny to me that it’s perfectly acceptable to just wander through someone’s sheep field, but that’s the way it’s been for centuries – something called the “Right to Roam” in Scotland, and there are similar laws in England. We saw a Common Buzzard, Eurasian Collared Dove, and LOTS of sheep (natch!), but we were not able to identify any of the birds of prey we saw as definitely being a Golden Eagle. Even so the walk through a sheep field was lovely.
On the road to our next destination – the Cairngorm Mountains – we also saw more Eurasian Oystercatchers. These looked somewhat different from the ones we’d seen the previous day – they had yellow markings, but I haven’t been able to find any documentation of this in books or online.
Our next stop was Glenmore, a park in the Cairngorms that Kevin had read about in a brochure. I’d wanted to see the Cairngorm Mountains because they are the setting for one of my favorite books as a child: “The Haunted Mountain,” by Mollie Hunter. It is a wonderful, magical story, and I wanted to see the setting for myself, since we were so close. Originally, we’d intended to just drive through without really stopping, but, serendipitously, we stopped in the gift store at Glenmore, and I flipped through a book titled, “Short Walks in the Cairngorms.” One of the walks was along the Lairig Ghru, a name I know well from the story. The main character – a farmer named MacAllister – often travels along the Lairig Ghru. Grabbing the opportunity, we decided to take the time and do this hike, as we hadn’t really had much else planned for this day, except to drive up to the Orkneys.
Away in the north of Scotland, in the part they call the Highlands, there is a mountain by the name of Ben MacDui, and this mountain is haunted. There is no doubt whatsoever that this is the case. Everyone knows it to be so, and the creature that roams there is called . . . An Ferla Mor, which is a name from the old Gaelic language of the Highlands, and which means the Great Gray Man.
~ from The Haunted Mountain by Molly Hunter
We started out from the car park next to Loch Morlich, and not long after getting underway, we spotted this Osprey hunting over the loch. Beautiful! Many months later, I found out that Osprey are, in fact, rather rare in Scotland. Once they were common, but then they were nearly extirpated from Great Britain, and have only recently (the past 20 or so years?) began to make a comeback. Learning that makes this bird, fairly common to me in the states, even more special. We also saw Black-headed Gull and Barn Swallow swooping over the loch.
The Cairngorms are utterly gorgeous. This boreal forest is apparently some of the last remaining original British forestland, and we had the good fortune to see it on a slightly misty day, and the quality of the light saturated all the colors in the vegetation and the rocks and the warm-colored earth.
Fergus rode along cheerfully, feeling the sun warm on his face as he set it south toward the Lairig Ghru and wondering at the color of the Cairngorm Mountains ahead of him. They looked almost blue fro this distance, he thought, a deep, dark – almost a navy blue – and he decided they hae been very well named, for cairn is a Geaelic word meaning rock, and gorm is the Gaelic for blue.
We headed up the mountain, soon reaching the trailhead. As Kevin was not familiar with the book, as we walked I told him the story in as much detail as I could remember – my debut as a bard? Primarily, it focused on MacAllister’s troubles with the Sidhe – the fairy folk. We had a perfect day for the telling of a spooky tale, in these beautiful mountains on a gray, rainy day.
McAllister had a good distance to travel to Peigi-Ann’s home . . . for the track to it was by way of a lairig, as they call a mountain pass, and this lairig was a long one that cut right through the Cairngorm Mountains. The Lairig Ghru – the Gloomy Pass – it is called, for it is a wild and desolate place and even in high summer there are stretches of it that never see the sun. It takes a bold man, therefore, to travel the Lairig Ghru at the best of times and only a fool or a desperate man would do so in the bleak winter . . .
We saw some wonderful birds, including two new species of tit: Coal Tit, and European Crested Tit. Later, I learned that the crested tits are considered rather hard to spot, so I’m glad we managed. It seems that we had an even better day than we’d realized at the time. I was able to get a good look at a Common Chaffinch, and we spotted a male Pied Flycatcher – much easier to ID than the possible female we’d seen the previous way. Very cute, but quite different in shape from North American flycatchers. We also saw a Eurasian Treecreeper, and I didn’t realize until much later that this is a different species from our Brown Creepers back home. Barn Swallow were seen here, as well, along with Common Swift, and at least one pair of European Robin.
We spotted a lovely Common Redstart a ways up the trail after we were above most of the trees. The day was hazy to start with, and it had started to drizzle, but not hard enough to be of any bother. I was excited to see this beautiful little fellow, who allowed us to get quite close as he went about his business. Nearby, we found a charming little Eurasian Siskin, in a thin patch of trees that lined the trail. High in a coniferous tree, I spotted a bird that I suspect might have been a Red/Scottish Crossbill. It was mostly brownish, but since I wasn’t able to get a good look at the beak, I’ll call this one “possible.”
It was a gray and cloudy day now, but for miles and miles ahead, he could see, there was a great waste of bare, rocky ground, all ridged with great boulders sticking out of it and pitted with great craters plunging down. Not a tree, not a bush grew there to soften its harshness. It was a wild and barren place, a place as lonely as a desert.
We were drizzled upon throughout most of our hike (which probably explains why we encountered no other people on the trail), but while we were in the forest, the trees protected us. The last part of the walk, however, was down a gravel road. Not only did we have no tree cover, but the rain began to fall harder as well. By the time we returned to the car we were soaked so thoroughly that I had to change clothes right there in the car. But far from ruining our day, that rain somehow added to the richness of the day, and makes my memory of it more real and alive. The Lairig Ghru is a magical place, and easy to believe that the Sidhe could be moving around, just out of sight.
When we left the Cairngorms behind and continued north, I had a rather magnificent sighting: I spotted a large, reddish bird flying and kiting right along the side of the road. Although I had my best look after the bird had flown a ways away, there was no chance of misidentifying this really distinctive and beautiful bird as a Red Kite. The sweeping line of the tail and the color made me certain of this ID, even though the bird was out of its normal range. Kites are in the process of being reestablished into Scotland, so this may have been a released bird, but it’s still countable.
I also saw some really large shorebirds: Eurasian Curlew, although I only realized after returning home that this is a different species from the one I’ve seen in California.
We had lunch in Inverness at the Auld Distillery, and then continued north. The drive to Thurso was beautiful, and only took three hours, not the five we’d expected. On the way to the Orkneys, we did stop along the coast – a rocky shoreline on the North Sea, from which we thought we could see Norway in the distance. Back at home, though, I realized that Norway is not nearly close enough to see from Scotland, so I’m guessing that were were looking somewhat south, rather than east, and were seeing part of Scotland across the Moray Firth. Here, we saw some unidentified birds, and a large (7’ long) animal swimming along the coast. A seal, perhaps? (Or maybe a kelpie). 😉
When we arrived, we had some “bad” news: the commuter ferry schedule on Saturday would not work for us to get onto the Orkneys with our rental car, so we headed for John O’Groats, to get information on passenger ferries and guided tours. We found lodging at John O’Groats, the “Last House” on the Scottish mainland. We couldn’t decide which tour to take, so we decided to sleep on it and decide in the morning. We had a gorgeous view of the North Sea from our hotel room, although no private bath. 🙂
Species List
Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo), Eurasian Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto), Eurasian Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus), Western Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus), Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica), Common Swift (Apus apus), Crested Tit (Lophophanes cristatus), Coal Tit (Periparus ater), Eurasian Treecreeper (Certhia familiaris), European Robin (Erithacus rubecula), European Pied Flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca), Common Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs), Common Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus), Eurasian Siskin (Spinus spinus), Red Kite (Milvus milvus), Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata), Mother of Thyme (Thymus praecox), Common Heather (Calluna vulgaris), Marsh Thistle (Cirsium palustre), Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris)
Let me know what you think!