Day 1 of land-based watch off west Scotland

Monday mornings don’t get any better than this! A hot cup of tea, several layers of fleeces and we’re ready for our first land-based survey day. We’re watching the glorious vista out of the sitting room window, waiting for the sun to climb up over the mountain behind us to provide sufficient light on the sea for us to start our first watch.

We’re conducting a pilot land-based cetacean survey off the west coast of Scotland where residents, commercial boat operators and scientists alike have reported declines in whales and dolphins over the last decade when naval exercises are happening in the local area. Over the next two weeks we are expecting Joint Warrior, the biggest exercise in Europe and reportedly one of the biggest navy exercises of all time, to occur in the waters around us. Nine allied countries are to be involved and a total of 29 ships and 4 submarines. Conducting sightings from land means that we can monitor a larger area and watch the movement of whales and dolphins in the local area without influencing their behaviour.

We’ve already got used to seeing a big male grey seal bobbing in the surf just off our beach and a kestrel that includes our garden in his foraging route. We also witnessed a massive white-tailed (?) eagle flying over and coming to perch on a rocky headland just to the north of us and being mobbed by a pair of hooded crows before disappearing over the hilltop. Wow. There were also small rafts of eider ducks on the water, cormorants flying low to the wavelets and the occasional auk.

We’re here to spot minke whales, harbour porpoises and dolphins in the lead up to Joint Warrior - and we weren’t disappointed! We watched extra closely through the big eyes when we saw gannets circling above a patch of water and we were rewarded! Nicola and I both had brief glimpses of a minke whale today. Whilst mine was small and distant, whereas Nicola’s was only 500 metres offshore! However, these weren’t our first minkes of this trip… On our way home after uploading the blog yesterday, whilst pulling over to let a sheep cross the road, on glancing out of the car window, Nicola spotted the unmistakable surfacing of a minke!!

Today the sun shone intermittently, lighting up parts of the glorious outer Isles. We could never get bored of watching, especially with Skye as our backdrop, but, the wind increased throughout the day so that we had to stop watching at 2.30pm. Oh well, time to explore and enjoy some of the other bits of the west coast of Scotland…more tomorrow!

Gairloch

Sarah hard at work in our new 'office'

Nicola and Kila on a stick collecting exercise