Spring has arrived

    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.