Started the day looking for Black Grouse, with visibilty down to ten yards in mist this was seeming a rather poinless exercise. Not to mention the surreal appearance of a convoy of vintage cars crosssing the moorland at 7am. Talk about surreal, what the hell is a vintage car rally doing ploughing across a remote Highland moor at 7 O’Clock in the morning? Though I guess they might have been equally bemused by finding a group of wooly hatted folk all standing around in the mist with tripods in the middle of nowhere. We headed off home, amazingly stumbling across a lone Black-Cock lekking away right next to the road, not impressed at all no doubt that the stunning Hen he’d been hoping to attract turned out to be a  clunking 1930′s Austin 7. Strange things happen on those misty moors.

Spent the day birding around the Moray coast between Spey Bay and Burghead, the clear skies of the Highlands replaced by damp cold sea mist on arrival at Spey Bay! A small group of Common Scoter and Long-Tailed Ducks remained close inshore, though hardly any compared to even last week. A fantastic summer plumage Knot joined the Dunlin and Ringed Plovers at Lossiemouth and the first Little Tern of the year seen over the dunes as the weather finally cleared to yet more glorious sunshine.

A trip to a small coastal freshwater loch proved fruitful to see a drake Garganey, and while checking out a local Tree Sparrow colony got great views of a Tawny Owl and chick peering out at us from a nearby Owl box. Corn Bunting were showing well along the road to Spey Bay, sadly one of the only regular places we now see these birds, and several Grey Partridges in nearby fields an indicator also of what a bit of well managed local set-aside can achieve.

Finally ended up at Burghead to search for the ever elusive King Eider, a possible sighting well out to sea was not confirmed by a better view so dipped yet again on that one.

Highlight of the spring so far for me was finding this stunning Camberwell Beauty on the track to the house earlier this month. In weather more typical of southern Europe at this time of year, it was seen gliding around the foliage of a Balsam Poplar and sunning itself on the track for about half an hour. I wondered if it was the strong scent of this foliage which had attracted it in the first place??

Even made it to  BBC online!

Most of the spring migrants are in, Redstarts and Tree Pipits singing in the glorious sunshine we’ve been having. The last week has seen some of the clearest skies and light I have ever seen up here, today I watched a stunning female Caper preening in a pine in brilliant afternoon sunlight, sadly the photos weren’t very successful!

Great Northern Divers are starting to come in to stunning breeding plumage before they head off back across the Atlantic, quite a few along the shores of Loch Linnhe showing very well. Was over on Mull a few times, one day clocking up 11 individual Eagles in 2 hours! (4 WTE and 7 Goldies).

Common Crossbill seem very scarce these days, but families of Parrots are showing well in various places in the forest where there are cones. On the Moray Coast sea duck numbers are steadily falling, but waders are starting to move through and a good flock of about 60 Purple Sandpipers is still hanging around Lossiemouth.

Nice find last week was a Redwing singing at a regular site, good to know that a small population is still hanging on in the Highlands, oddly enough have hardly seen any Fieldfare or redwings this spring passing back through, probably just not stopping because of the clear weather. We have had no significant rainfall in these parts for about six weeks now, and nice as this weather is, sitting out in the garden in "hot" sunshine, in April, in the North of Scotland, is just a bit worrying as to what is going on with the climate!