Following our walk round half of the Balranald Nature Trail we did the whole lot ...so here are the photos of 'the other half'.
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| Stinky Bay - lots of seaweed in the surf. |
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| Feeding Black-headed and Common Gulls. |
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| Greater Black-backed Gull. |
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| Shelduck. |
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| Calling Eider. |
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| Well camouflaged Common Gull Chick. |
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| Demanding food... |
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| Success! |
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| Evening light... |
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| Somewhere on the horizon is St Kilda - you could see it through binoculars. |
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| Painting stop... |
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| ..and opportunity for a snooze! |
As well as the midden (previous blog) we enjoyed spectacular views and it was nice to find some By-the-wind-sailors (Velella velella) as well as some small Goose Barnacles.
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| Baby Goose Barnacles. |
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| By-the-wind-sailor. |
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| Lovely colours. |
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| I wondered why I had taken this photo and then I zoomed in ot the dot in the top right corner: White-tailed Eagle! |
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| Dramatic skies. |
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| Arctic Terns. |
Not a promising forecast, so we hit the beach at Baleshare. A short walk out to the midden and the rain began....but it was nice to see the shell layers and to find fragments of Iron Age pottery.
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| Shell fragments. |
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| Bone. |
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| Charcoal. |
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| Mussels. |
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| Periwinkles. |
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| Mainly Mussels. |
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| Cockles. |
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| Pottery. |
The flowers on our walk had been stunning and deserve a blog on their own ...the previous blog details the walk. There will be a later blog on the orchids of our holiday...
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| The range of Dactylorhiza stunning, with Northern Marsh-orchid, Early Marsh-orchid and Common Spotted-orchids being present many of my photos will be unlabelled until I get back and Tom can help me with identification - especially of the hybrids! |
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| Frog orchids I can do though - although they do of course hybridise too! |
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| Common Spotted-orchid on the left - possibly var Hebridensis and Early Marsh-orchid on the right. |
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| Wild Pansies in an arable field. |
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| Pansies, Buttercups and Daisies. |
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| Plenty of Daisies! |
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| Ragged Robin in a damper area. |
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| Biting Stonecrop. |
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| Corn Marigolds, Field Poppies and Forget-me-nots. |
Our first evening on North Uist and the weather came out beautiful, so a walk from the campsite - just half of the red nature trail. It was a good job it was just half a walk, as I took way too many photos! Anyway, the first blog is of the walk, with more flowery photographs in the next blog. With Corncrakes calling, turquoise seas and an abundance of flowers what a perfect evening|!
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| Lesser Black-backed Gull. |
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| Last time we were here there was a Corn Bunting that sat and sang from the top of the tractor - not today. |
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| Lovely machair. |
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| There were many orchids ....at least five in this picture...more in the next blog... |
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| Classic Hebrides. |
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| Dunlin on the beach. |
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| More views... |
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| Silver Y Moth - a migrant... |
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| ..and there were lots of Painted Lady Butterflies too ... another migrant and lovely to see so many. |
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| An arable field. |
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| Oystercatcher. |
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| Dunlin. |
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| Thrift - nearly all over. |
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| What I presume to be a glacial erratic. |
