Final day of our short break, and the forecast was wet. CJW decided not to set his alarm as he didn't fancy getting up at 05:00hrs to walk around a wood in the rain for some odd reason. I woke up early as per usual and stuck my head out of the window to find it wasn't actually raining. Unfortunately, I woke CJW up and told him the good news. We were soon running down the stairs of the hotel and out into the Scottish morning darkness. What I couldn't see from the hotel window though, was an extremely black sky approaching, and by the time we reach our destination, it was pouring down. We sat in the car and waited, checking the rain app which showed it just as a narrow ribbon. And sure enough, it stopped. We walked round the wood for the next hour or so, and then we returned to the car. We'd failed on our third target bird, which was of course the CAPERCAILLIE (but thanks to those who provided the site details, and don't worry, we have more sites now for our next trip).
Following our second and last full English, we returned to the room. We had several options. Firstly, there were two SNOW GEESE in Inverness, discovered only yesterday. The issue I had with this was the 55 minute drive to the site in the opposite direction that we were heading. There was also an ALPINE SWIFT in Clyde that was seen yesterday afternoon. This site was only just off the motorway and so if there was positive news we could easily pop in.
By the time we were ready to head off, there was no news on either targets. CJW came up with a cunning plan. We could head to a whisky shop in Tomintoul, only a few miles up the road. So we did.
We arrived in Tomintoul at 0930 following a drive over some very bleak, barren, birdless moors. The Whisky Castle was shut, it was sleet/raining and the wind was gale force. As we sat in the car park waiting for the shop to open at 10 (or 0930 according to the website), we were entertained by watching full bins being blown over in the high street and their contents distributed around the town, and then watched two locals pick up a few items and pop them back in the bin. It kept us amused.
At 10:00, after ringing the shop, we finally went in. It was a fantastic little shop, full of whisky, most that we hadn't heard of, but we had a very nice chat to the proprietor. And then we set off for home.
The route home was simply amazing. The sat nav took us straight through the mountains. We stopped at Lecht Ski resort which had a very small bit of snow, then through Glenshee, past Balmoral and eventually on to the A9 at Perth. We had certainly driven through some of the finest scenery possible during our weekend.
View from Lecht
Red Grouse en route (CJW)
As we travelled south, we received news that the ALPINE SWIFT was again present in Clyde. It was about two hours away. We carried on, but only received one more piece of positive news. We didn't know whether it was present all the time, or whether it was coming and going.
We arrived at Baron's Haugh RSPB just after 14:00hrs. We walked down towards the Marsh hide but saw someone standing at the bottom of the paddocks. As we were approaching, the Alpine Swift was flying overhead. We stood watching it for nearly an hour, sometimes it came quite low. All the disappointment of the birds we'd missed evaporated. It had been a fantastic trip!
