I FOUND ONE TOO. (05/05/13)

Yesterday KEITH at HOLDINGMOMENTS posted a picture of a horrible scruffy feral pigeon. He did but he also posted a wonderful image of a rare bird here. A White Wagtail. This morning on the way back from an arduous walk I found two of them.

Here they are……mine are better as they  both blacker on their black bits and whiter on their white bits. Mine are Pied Wagtails. Despite having read a large PDF document explaining in infinite detail the difference between the White and Pied Wagtail I’ll be blowed if I’m much wiser. The folk who wrote the PDF seemed a bit confused and they had little excuse as they were ringing them and had the little blighters by the handful. For those of you with an hour to kill you can read all about them HERE. (Hold CTRL+click and the PDF should download). Seriously though. Let us hear a big round of applause for Keith. The boy done good!

This morning I waited till gone seven as the weather looked a little unsettled. I then set off up the hill and joined a forestry track. It isn’t marked on my map so I had no idea where it was going I was trying to get above the treeline for some good views.

  Wandering up through the wood I came across these. They are Hoof or Tinder Fungus. Fomes fomentarius. These two are about normal sized and the size of a ponies hoof……..This one……………………..

   It is a giant. It is a good eighteen to twenty inches across, a real cracker.

  My plan was to get to the little sheds just on the sky line to the left of centre. They are something to do with the hydro-electric pipe line that you can see running up the hill. Once I got to the forest track it was zig-zagging nicely in roughly the right direction. Then after a mile or so it shot off back down hill. I wasn’t very happy. I recall saying so to the dogs. It is impossible to walk through these plantations as this land will be on, at least, it’s second crop of timber. They do drag out most of the stumps but it is still impossible to traverse on foot. It’s a helicopter job. Even the fire breaks are a horror to walk up.

A dead tree basking in the sunshine. This is a fire break.

This was as good as the views got.. Not a brilliant Sunday morning but I have experienced many much worse.

Tomorrow I’m cutting short my stay here and heading back to Kinross. My new computer is being delivered on Tuesday. I’ve also booked the dogs in for a haircut. Wednesday I’m heading back north to Glencoe. I haven’t planned anything after the thirteenth when I leave the Kings House pub. The Kings House is at the top of Glencoe.

Scotland has a lot of big holiday parks but not very many small camp sites. I’ll do some research as I’m staying up here till October.

Have a good week.