Jun 12th, 2015

Author: donich_admin

Summer visitors

This morning we saw our first gannet of the year on Loch Goil. They seem to be occasional summer visitors here (not like Shetland where you see them by the thousand). I’ve always thought they were very beautiful birds with their yellow throats and graceful black tipped wings.

Another set of summer visitors is the swifts (and the occasional swallow). There seem to be many more this year than last year and they are incredible to watch swooping around catching midgies (hooray!). There are lots over our garden, but for some reason their favourite place seems to be the car park at the Goil Inn where there is a large muddy puddle they drink from. There are literally hundreds of them there and a lot of the houses in the village have their distinctive mud nests under their eaves. We don’t seem to have any of the nests – perhaps because we have a modern house which is the ‘wrong shape’ for them.

Anyway – I couldn’t get a photo of the gannet (too far away) or the swifts (too fast), so here is a photo of one of the nests.