The final part from Mull…

 …and personally, I think I have saved the best till last. Mull is brilliant, fantastic and any other superlative you can come up with for wildlife. It’s always a privilege to be there and photograph White-tailed Eagle, Hen Harrier, Otters etc. and I have watched and photographed Otters on a number of occasions while on Mull but this encounter I had with a mother and two cubs is one of the best wildlife experience’s I have ever had. It was an honour to be in the presence of these Otters and have them to be so at ease that they felt they could come so close to us and not feel threatened at all was wonderful. However, I find sometimes with experience’s like this the images you get don’t do it justice, you just have to be there.

Isle of Mull part eight

 Told you there would be a lot of Blogs but don’t worry this is the penultimate and it’s White-tailed Eagle again. When I put my Blogs together, I sometimes group the images in a certain way (all one species together for example) however these images are shown in the order they were taken.

Adult birds calling to each other and probably to the juveniles in the nest.

Most of the time they were too far away for any decent images but they did on occasions, come close. 

The previous two images are of the Eagle going on what turned out to be a hunting trip as not long after it flew off it came back carrying what looks like a gosling.

The local Buzzard did not like the Eagles flying over its territory and every time they came close the Buzzard would try and chase them off. The Eagles of course did not take a blind bit of notice and did it regularly. This is one of those encounters.

After these encounters the Eagles would fly back to their favourite tree and just sit.

We were parked not far from Loch Don waiting for a Hen Harrier to put in an appearance when this Eagle landed nearby. A second flew over coming from the same direction as the first. Loch Don is not far from where we were staying, I wondered at the time could these be the same Eagles that we could see from the cottage.

One of the adults was sitting in its tree sunning itself when this happened

A juvenile, the first time I had seen one, flew in to take over the adults favourite branch.

 It just sat there surveying the world around it.

However, the adult had flown off to hunt. It came back with another gosling.

Friday and our penultimate day on Mull and one of the Eagles decided to fly right over my head. It’s as if it knew that we were leaving and decided to put on one last show and I’m pleased it did.

Isle of Mull part seven

 Some of the larger birds from our time on Mull.

Female Hen Harrier seen while we were on our way to Iona.

A different female seen while we were coming back from Iona.

This male Hen Harrier was hunting in the field opposite the cottage. He put in an appearance two or three times while we were there.

A “Tourist Eagle” (Buzzard) doing what they normally do, fly off from a telegraph pole when you stop the car to take a picture.

This Buzzard was hunting the fields not far from Lochdon and at first I was convinced it was a Hen Harrier because it was so light in colour.

This one was our local Buzzard which I saw every day outside the cottage.

Short-eared Owl. These are the best shots I could manage. It was the only one we saw and it was around a quarter of a mile away and unfortunately the heat haze has just about ruined the shots. We went back on another couple of occasions but the Owl didn’t show up.

We saw Hooded Crow everywhere we went on Mull.

This dot in the sky is the only Golden Eagle we saw while we were on Mull.