Its been another glorious month on the Isle of Mull again. All the spring flowers have now past and the summer ones are starting to fill the verges and fields with colour.

There have been a number of rarities/migrants appearing up on the island, but not just in the bird life. And as it can often turn out in wildlife spotting i have virtually missed all of them. Among the birds which have shown up there has been Hoopoe, Black-eared Wheat-ear, full summer plumaged Slavonian Grebe and a probable Common Crane.

We have even had a rare mammel, spotted on one of the lochs was a Bearded Seal. These are quite rare indeed for this country, the normal range for this seal is in the arctic.

Alas once again by the time i had a chance to go and try and find it, it was nowhere to be seen, if i could swear here i would.. But luckily here is a photo of it, it was taken by David Davis who was staying on the camp-site where i work. Many thanks for giving me permission to use your photo David.

But at least not all the rarities/uncommon have passed me by. I have found a couple of new sites on the island for the rare Marsh Fritillary, plus this butterfly is a first for me. And another first and not often recorded insect is the unusual Narrow-bordered Bee Hawk-moth which have been seen a number of times in the last couple of weeks.

My moth trap has been running very regularly and has produced a number of new species for the island, my species list is up to 84 in just a little over 9 weeks and the best time of year is still to come, so i am hoping to be able to easily crack the 100 mark before things start to quiten down again.

One thing that most people who come to Mull go on one tof the trips out to the Treshnish isles to see sea-birds, last week we did one of the tours. We only decided on the morning that we go and see if there was any room left. Luckily for us there was, the day was one of the best we have had up to now, blue skies and not a breath of wind.

The sea was like a mill-pond and according to the skipper of the boat it was very very rare to get conditions like that. On route to the first island we came across a pod of about 15 Common Dolphins we just kept circling around whilst the Dolphins played in the wake of the boat, if only you could work out where they would leap out of the water. Then a little nearer to the island we came across 3 Basking sharks, these are such slow gracefull movers in the water.

Then we landed on the island of Lunga which is famous for its Puffins, it is remarkable that they have no fear of man, you can just lay down on the grass and they will virtually walk over the top of you. I was hoping to get some photos of them with Sand Eels in there beaks but we were a bit to earlier. They are still busy digging their burrows and making the nests, at least i have an excuse to go back again in a few weeks.

    And it all seemed to appear in a little over a week. We have been having some glorious weather up here over the last month, which has really helped things along. With the glorious weather i have even got up at 5am for the sunrise over Ben Nevis.

Last week-end we went on a Mull Bird club outing around the estates of Duart and Torosay castles.  After a very wet start and much looking out of car windows, the clouds parted and the sun came out for the rest of the day, so 22 pair of eyes set of out. The days total came to 61 species, including Redstart, Wood-Warbler, Whitethroat, Black-cap and Grass-hopper Warbler all firsts for the year.

We have had very large numbers of Swallows and Sand Martins arrive over the last week, on Wednesday it was an amazing sight we Swallows flying around everywhere busily feeding on all the flies in the warm evening light. We are just waiting on the return of the Terns now and then all of out summer visitors will be here.

Among other notable birds for the island are a Nut-hatch, which was the first record for the island and a magpie which are very uncommon migrants and do not breed here. This always seems strange to me as where we moved from they were everywhere you looked 

The otters are also putting in a regular appearance now with 2 large cubs often seen with the mother around the coast line of the camp-site where i work. I thought they may get a little bit more wary with the increase of campers on the site, but they seem to just carry on their daily routine as if nobody was there.

We have even had a pair of Dolphins passing up the sound, these were the first dolphins i have seen and we watched them for about an hour as they played jumping and splashing around. I just wish i could have worked out where they were going to leap out of the water.

Many of the verges and woodlands are now covered in spring flowers, the Bluebells have about another 10 days before they are at the best, i have managed to find a very mixed wood which has very big carpets of Bluebells, so i will be visiting that regular to make sure i don’t miss it. The bright white of Wood Sorrel and Anemones are popping up in little groups in the areas which get more sunlight amongst all the trees.

It has been a little bit slower on the Butterfly and Moth front, i have only seen Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell and possible a Orange-tip butterfly and although i have been running my moth trap virtually every other night the species list only stands at 16 with 167 individual moths. I am still experimenting a little with different light bulbs to see which ones will give me the best results. Normally the end of May beginning of June is he best time for running a moth trap, so i have a bit more time left to try and work out the best method.

The birds are still eating the seed as quick as we put it out for them, they will get though two (30cm) full feeders in a day, i think sometimes we even get a Red Deer at night comes down and tries to get some. We get one of my favourite birds on the every day, a pair of Golfinches, i have also had a Redpoll and linnet coming regularly to pick up the seed below the feeders.

The Mull & Iona wild-life week starts next Wednesday, and as it seems to be most years the weather has changed and it is now raining. But i will still be out and about seeing what is going on.

It has been a very mixed weeek up here on Mull, we have had just about every kind of weather you can think off. Including a couple of very nice days indeed, which have brought out the Bumble Bee’s and other flies.

The flowers are coming on fairly quick too, Primroses are popping up all over and others include Lesser Celandine, Golden Saxifrage, Dogs Mercury and the Bluebells are shooting up but no sign of the buds yet.

On one of the very nice days i thought it was time to put out my moth trap for the first time, so it came out on Sunday night the temp dropped to below freezing but i still managed to get 6 species of moth (8 moths in all) not a big number when you compare to the amount you can get in summer.

A Yellow Horned and a Hebrew Character

I will be running my trap as much as the weather allows, i would recommend anybody to have a go at mothing, some of the colours and patterns that you get are truly magnificent. It does away with the myth that moths are just plain brown and eat your clothes, there are over 2400 species of moth in the British Isles. So why not have a go all you need is a outdoor light to start with.

It is so nice on the sunny days to hear all of the bird song around at the moment,  everything seems to be dispalying and gettign ready for the impending breeding season. I am still however feeding the birds and the are really going through the food. I am filling up the feeder everyday for them, the feeder has only been up for 12 days and they found it straight away. I just hope their natural food starts to make an apperance soon, i’m getting low on seed.

  So far i have had on the feeder.

•    Blue Tit
•    Great Tit
•    Coal Tit
•    Chaffinch
•    Greenfinch
•    House Sparrow
•    Sisken
•    Robin

    and on the Song Thrush, Blackbird, Wren and Hedge Sparrow.

Welcome to my first blog from the Isle.

We have had a weeks holiday before we started work, and what a week it was.

We got over 60 species of birds, including Red & Black Throated Divers, Crossbills, Manx Shearwaters, Hen Harriers, Golden Eagles and of course the White-tailed Eagles.

The White-tails are now sat on eggs and survived the strong winds that thre has been up here recently. Already this season one person has been arrested for disturbing the birds, they were right underneath the nest. When approached by the police, they even admitted that they were too close to the nest but wanted some close up pictures. So they promptly had all there gear confiscated and escorted to the local nick.  Some people just amaze me.

Here is my first recognisable photo a the WTSE, still not brillaint but it was about 1/2 mile away.

Not many of the summer migrants here yet, There has been one report of a Chiff-chaff, and the Cuckoo’s should be here in the next couple of weeks.

Most of the birds are also getting their summer plumage, i had a wonderful Red-throated Diver,but to far for any pics

All of the other birds are starting to display in readiness for the breeding season,  most of the ducks which breed around here are displaying to each other now.

Pair of Ravens displaying.

The spring flowers are slowly staring to make an apperance now with the first Primroses starting to open, also there is Colts-foot, Dogs Mercury, Lesser Celandine and many of the trees are starting to show signs of life.

 The mammels have been particularly good for us on our holiday, although there are not too may different ones, the ones that are here do make up for it.

The only Hare which is on the Island is the Mountain the more common Brown Hare is not present. And this is one animal which changes it coat in the winter months.

Here are the winter and summer colour forms of ther Mountain Hare, even though we don’t get as much snow nowadays some of the Hare’s still change colour, and the white ones are very easy to spot against the darker background.

The Red deer are all over the island in very large numbers, there are even some which wander around the camp-site at night. The best place to watch these mighty beasts is actually from the side of the road at this time of the year, as they spend nearly all of the time grazing in the grass near the burns, an doccasionlly you get them down on soem of the shores.

And finally you cannot forget one of the main creatures people coewm to see on Mull, the Otter. These can be found all over the island’s coast-line, sometimes you only get a brief distant view, but if you go where it is very quite, you can get soem really nice views.

This is think is a dog Otter, he was pretty big. We just came across him whilst walking along the shore, he just looked up as us then put his head back down and carried on napping in the sun.

In my future blogs i wil try and stick to particular things which i do, hopefully you will enjoy them. My moth trap will be going out before to long so that may be one of the subjects for my future blogs.

Regards,

Andy