Happy Birthday Youngshanks

Youngshanks is a quarter of a century old today. We gave him a call this morning to wish him many happy returns, although he's more preoccupied with revising for his final year exams than celebrating his birthday.

Our first day on the Uists and the weather is considerably better than last week at Culkein, top candidate for a blip photo today was Mrs L looking over Loch Mor in short sleeves, but that was until we visited Balranald. We were on the Uists in June last year and at last managed to see a Corncrake, previously it'd been a bird we'd heard but never seen. It loves dense tall grasses and although we'd had a brief sighting last year the target this year was to get a photograph and by coming a month earlier our hope was the grasses would be less tall and less dense.

So arriving at Balranald RSPB where they have fields set aside that they specifically manage for Corncrake we were shocked and disappointed by what we saw those fields were virtually bare, resembling more a cricket field than somewhere a Corncrake would find attractive. Reading the visitors book there was an entry from a couple a week ago bemoaning the state of the fields. This was followed by what I can only describe as a moronic response from what one presumes was an RSPB representative - "Ooops we cut the grass - it's cold and wet and the Corncrakes are late arriving" - I felt like making a further response, okay now it's not cold and wet and the Corncrakes are arriving, just where do you think they'll go? - I didn't, after all not all my own decisions stand up to the scrutiny of hindsight, but not sure what foresight was used on this one.

So we used headed off for areas not under RSPB management in the hope that the Corncrakes would have done similar and we weren't disappointed. Pretty soon Mrs L heard one and pulled the car over we hung around a while quarter of an hour later heard it again and were able to pinpoint it a bit better. We split up to triangulate the area we thought it was in. Another quarter of an hour and this time we heard it close by. Mrs L was the first to spot it, but couldn't get my attention, she then came over to my viewpoint but couldn't find it again.

Suddenly there it was, by the blue recycling bin - a nice landmark! Snap, snap, snap and our first ever pictures of a Corncrake were in the camera, not great pictures, but that didn't matter. Over the next 45 minutes we were able to position ourselves to get better views and better pictures. It may be Youngshanks's birthday, but it seems like we got the birthday present.