Sunday 9 March 2008

Wildlife on Ben Vorlich

You may have noticed there's not much to read on this blog. I am not too much of a writer and prefer to say the basics and let the pictures or your imagination do the talking. Having said that I was chatting to my sister a few days ago and we were talking about the amazing views we had on the Ben Vorlich walk but also how much wildlife we had seen.

The first spot was while still driving down the narrow snow covered track along the south side of Loch Earn and nearly running over a red squirrel. They are basically smaller and cuter than their big grey cousins and I don't ever remember seeing one in Scotland before.

Next up was the amazing line of deer on a neighbouring hillside. I have seen lots of deer before but always hanging out or moving in a herd. There is a photo on the slideshow where you can make out a long, winding single file line of deer making their way up the hill. We estimated there must have been 50-60 in the line. Can anyone shed any light on this behaviour.

Andy's dog Brinkley didn't even make an attempt to keep up with the mountain hare that shot across the hill only about 10m n front of us.

Finally we were treated to an aerial display from a number of birds of prey which we unfortunately were not able to identify. Initially the 4 birds appeared to be jousting together with 2 larger birds fending off 2 slightly smaller birds. One of the larger birds then appeared soaring in the fresh breeze blowing up the hillside just a few metres above us. Our best bet as a group was a buzzard but nobody was claiming any expertise in this field.

For a very cold winters day out in the snow it was quite a feast of Scottish wildlife.

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