Monday 16th June - The royal flush and a day of pairs

Today Jack and Ben were co guiding on a Mull Nature Explorer and managed to achieve as in Jacks words the Royal flush, which I will explain later!

Firstly, before even getting to our starting spot of the tour we had two Irish hares to begin with, and the guests were amazed about learning this subspecies to the mountain hare, which was brought over to mull for hunting by the Duke of Argyll and is still thriving on mull to this day.

We then arrived at a sea loch to see two white tailed eagles resting high up on pine trees, before one took flight and startled all the waders and gulls up into flight. Before circling back on itself and landing in the same tree as its partner, giving mega views of both eagles in the same tree.

We then gradually ventured around the loch in the van scanning the shore line and another white tailed eagle was flying right above the car and genuinely lead us to a mum and cub otter sleeping on the seaweed and everyone got nice views through the scope. The otters were fast asleep and just as we got back into the van typically they started becoming active.

The conditions were tricky in the morning, as the cloud was very low and meant we had to give it some time, in order to try to find some golden eagles. Luckily, as soon as the low cloud cleared up a golden eagle pair ascended from the cliff above us flying together and one landing on the cliff for a short while before they both went hunting, this was just magical and our patience paid off with the weather.

Moving into the afternoon, we went to a white tailed eagle nest and had the white tailed eagle constantly calling as it was being mobbed by a buzzard. There was some fantastic news though, one of the guests spotted a white tailed eagle chick for the first time this season in the nest, just a very heartwarming experience and brought a smile to everyone’s face ! Throughout the day, it was brilliant to see people trying to digiscope through our scopes and get some great photos and videos this picture was taken by a guest.

Then continuing with our momentum Jack, spotted short-eared owl flying around a rocky mound then landed and giving prolonged flight views and dive-bombing into the grass hunting. Everyone could really see the large wings to body ratio in flight.

At our last stop of the day, it was a hilly grassland environment and like a trend throughout the day it was not a long wait before a pair of hen harriers appeared hunting across the grassland and Ben spotted what he thought was a food pass but actually was a male hen harrier mobbing a buzzard, it was fascinating to see this male hen harrier almost like it was getting a 'piggyback' off the buzzard as they both held themselves in the wind!

Jack just couldn’t be stopped today and spotted three more otters as we were all watching the hen harriers, Jack spotted three more otters in a sea loch behind us with seals so it was an exceptional spot and somehow for our royal flush which is seeing all the main species we target on the tours, we were missing one more thing a RED DEER!

There is more red deer on Mull than humans by 5:1 ratio and somehow this was the only animal we needed to see and fortunately after a quick scan on the mountains we had a red deer and completed the royal flush, which is an incredible achievement and a big thank you to the guest who had some great spotting skills and helped so much in the wildlife sightings throughout the day!