Different day, different eagle

Another stupendously gorgeous day out there today. Feeling a bit warmer too, now that the wind has finally dropped a little. The weather station just up the road is currently telling me it's zero degrees and feeling like minus five in the wind, but I have to say it didn't seem anywhere near as Baltic as it has done the past few days. Maybe I'm just getting used to it. Feeling in a birding kinda mood, I headed northwards (and upwards) into my 5MR in search of Red Grouse along the Quiraing road. 

The Quiraing road...

I pulled over and panned the camera around the general area where I've seen grouse before. No luck today, they're always a bit hit and miss at the best of times, but I'll be back up there again regardless; I have my 5MR Invert Surveys to do once the days lengthen and the snow disappears once more. Should bump into some grouse whilst wandering the hillsides.

Apologies for the wind noise in the video clip, I don't have one of those fluffy things to cut out the excess noise. 

A lone Raven, a female Kestrel and a pair of Buzzards summed up bird interest along the road, so I turned around and headed back, regularly stopping to scan the hillsides for those elusive grouse. I was almost back in sight of civilisation when the unmistakable shape of an eagle soared into view above the crest of a low rise. I quickly slammed into a ditch, jumped out and grabbed these few pics

I'm sure you're all completely blown away by the quality of those shots....

Heavily cropped version of the 'best' of the four images above

As per my last post, at least you can hopefully tell it's an eagle and not a pigeon! Except this one is a Golden Eagle, quite possibly the very same individual I spied about twenty minutes ago from my desk where I'm typing this very post. Watching a Golden Eagle soaring over a hilltop from the comfort of my room is one of the multitude of little things that makes Skye so bloody fantastic! I managed a short video clip of it whilst I was up the hill. The building you see is a tiny electrical substation, it's the only building up there and Sod's Law it got in my way. Again, prepare yourself for excessive noise.

Back in Uig, I had a look at the bay for signs of the dead dolphin (the rescue attempt failed, they couldn't find it the next day, presumably it's rolling around on the seabed at the moment and will wash up when the gases bloat the body) noting a Red-throated Diver, a few Black Guillemots, a lone male Eider and a handful of waders/gulls. No white-wingers to be seen, though I did yeartick Common Starfish as it flopped about in the bill of a Herring Gull. I almost yearticked Butterfish in the bill of a Shag, but couldn't conclusively rule out a young rockling species. 

Really hoping this spell of beautiful weather holds, could do with it being just a touch warmer, but I guess it is early February after all. Still, birds do move around when it's cold and I'm constantly living in hope of finding a lost Canada Goose, Coot, Parakeet or Mute Swan, all of which have near mythical status up here.