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.