I've Definitely got the Hump

Today was somewhat unusual; the weather was lovely and there was not a breath of wind nor drop of rain. The sea outside was absolutely flat calm. I needed to get myself to a viewpoint and check a certain stretch of loch not too far away. I jumped into what's left of my car and headed for a minor road that runs north of Dunvegan. 

To fill you in with the backstory, a rather impressive bit of phone footage came to light yesterday. A fish-farm worker in Loch Dunvegan posted a video of a Humpback Whale absolutely catapulting itself out of the water and landing with one almighty splash. The video was shared on the local WhatsApp group about twenty minutes before sunset, which is roughly the time I started gnashing my teeth. I checked the maps and figured I needed to be viewing from the east side of the loch with the light behind me and with little chance of losing the whale beneath cliffs if it was close in. There are a couple of roadside laybys just south of Claigan, that would be my vantage point. I went to bed hoping the whale would stick around until I could get there in the morning. 

I headed off noting zero Whooper Swans on Loch Greshornish and five on Loch Suardal (today is International Swan Census day and Skye has a handful of allocated sites to check) and was soon parked up in a suitable layby, simply scanning the loch with binoculars from inside my car. Almost immediately I started seeing Porpoises, then a small pod of Common Dolphins moved through. A large raft of Shags suddenly took flight and I truly expected the Humpback to burst into view, lunge feeding from beneath. Sadly the best I could muster was another small pod of Common Dolphins. 

And then there it was, a long body broke the surface and lazily rolled under once more, small dorsal fin atop a hump clearly visible. It rolled into view once more, giving better views. I watched it for a short while longer then realised I could probably just about grab a quick pic with my camera...

Images straight off the card

And cropped 'just a tad'

A car pulled up just behind me and I took my eye off the whale as I realised the driver was hanging out of his window with a pair of binoculars, scanning the sea in the same direction that I was. "Hiya buddy, there's a Humpback Whale out there" I called over to him. "I was hoping that's what you were looking at!" came the reply. Out hopped Ellie and Lance, a lovely couple from North Wales on their final day of a fortnight whale-watching up in the Skye area. Rather embarrassingly I failed to show them the Humpback, it had temporarily disappeared from view. Temporarily turned into 30 minutes and then I had to quit (rumour has it that I do actually work for a living, my boss will soon be forgetting what I look like). We swapped numbers and Lance later messaged to say they'd seen the whale well, moving between two fish farms. Phew, that's good news! Local birder Andy Stables later turned up and posted some pretty decent images on the WhatsApp group. He has a much better camera than I do, so good in fact that the distribution of barnacles can be seen on the left fluke in one of his pics and thoughts are that it may match images taken of the long-staying Ullapool individual which disappeared a few days ago!  

So that's me finally nailed a Humpback for the year after numerous attempts at various sites. Now all I need to do is identify the fly that flew inside my car whilst I was parked up (yesterday a Scathophaga stercoraria flew inside my car whilst I was parked up. This is a very easy technique to find flies!) It looks like a Heteromyza, I'll have a proper look this evening. The yearlist is up to 442 species now. Will I hit 500 by the end of the month??