A month of just missing out!!

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.