Geese on the Wing
A huge flock of geese just flew over at 9am – making lots of noise of course. We’ve had flocks of geese fly over many a time, but this one was the largest I’ve seen this year. I called the children out to see, then decided to go for my camera for a picture, but [...]
Highland Wildlife Park gets UK’s only Polar Bear
The Highland Wildlife Park gets the UK’s only Polar Bear, as it moves Mercedes in from Edinburgh Zoo: Polar bear unveiled at new home Got to admit, I have mixed feelings about the park – on the one hand, I’m hopefully that they are doing helpful zoological work for protecting endangered species. However…the park doesn’t [...]
Frogs return to Lochloy quarry
I found the quarry ponds on Lochloy Road the summer after moving in, and they were filled with frogspawn. I love amphibians, having kept ponds on and off since childhood to create living space for frogs, toads, and newts. I was building a pond in the front garden at the time, and in finding the [...]
Falcons for Nairn?
The BBC reports the Highland Council may look to copy a scheme used in Dumfries for tackling aggressive seagulls – which in part includes bringing in falcons to prey on them. More here: Seagulls scheme could be copied Information on the Dunfries scheme here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/8043904.stm
Happy Birthday Swan Island!
Jay is celebrating Swan Island reaching its second birthday this week! I’ve got to admit, I hadn’t even realised it had been carefully constructed – seeing the river has various shallows and grassy banks, I just assumed it had developed naturally. The fact that it was specially constructed and developed specifically for nesting, not least [...]
Grey squirrels approaching
The BBC reports that the Grey Squirrel is making it past the Cairngorms and is fast approaching – leading to calls for a cull: Concerns have been raised over the further spread of grey squirrels after sightings in the Cairngorms. The Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT) said greys were now spreading so far north its programme [...]
More whales in the Cromaty Firth
This time last year we witnessed a Sperm Whale enter the Moray Firth, unfortunately later dying. Now Bottle-Nosed Whales have been getting stranded off Cromaty: Marine conservationists are to carry out checks of the Cromarty Firth for a rare deep sea whale which escaped while attempts were made to humanely kill it. The animal became [...]
Dolphin Superpod off Moray
The BBC reports on a dolphin superpod being observed along the Moray Coast, comprised of around 400 short-beaked common dolphins. The pod doesn’t seem to be heading our way, though, instead apparently migrating towards the Pentland Firth. The dolphins were also found 10 miles off shore, so no easy spotting from land. The CRRU (Cetacean [...]
Little Ice Age for Nairn?
If you didn’t see it recently, the BBC reported that our Sun is now undergoing a period of extremely low activity – and that the last time this happened, big changes happened in Scotland, and Nairn was buried in a sandstorm. ‘Quiet Sun’ baffling astronomers According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it [...]
Moray Coast: A Tourist Destination or not?
At the beginning of the week I went to the Visit Nairn association AGM, to see what was planned for promoting Nairn as a tourist destination. Certainly there was a lot of very constructive talk, not least with addressing some of Nairn’s most outstanding issues. I’ll admit to being cautiously optimistic (and that’s from a [...]