Bottlenose dolphins, Flamborough Head

Great to see a pod of around 20 bottlenose dolphins off Flamborough Head today, including at least one baby. Also today around 50 grey and common seals.

From the Ullapool to Stornoway ferry

No visit to Ullapool is complete without a day trip on the ferry to Stornoway and back. It's not as good a dedicated whale watching trip, but at £20 a head as a foot passenger it's a lot cheaper and offers the chance of seeing a few decent cetaceans and seabirds. Today I caught the 10:30am ferry from Ullapool, we arrived at Stornoway at 1pm and left at 2pm, back in Ullapool for 4:45pm. If you want to go ashore you've hardly got time to get past the ferry car park at Stornoway before you need to be back on the boat but then that's not what I was here for. I was here for the boat journey.

The plan is pretty much the same as on the whale watching trip, look out for large groups of sea birds feeding and if you find one you may well have hit the jackpot. The only problem is the ferry just ploughs on, sticking to it's set course and speed and doesn't really care too much about what you have seen. It's not going to stop to let you have a closer look, you have to rely on birds and cetaceans being close enough and obliging enough for you to get a decent look at them. 

The photo above is looking south from the ferry towards Skye, you can even make out the Old Man of Storr and in the foreground you can see a flock of gannets feeding. A couple of minutes scanning through these and a minke whale revealed itself briefly about four times. Not a great view but decent enough to get a positive identification.

Whale watching in the Minch

When I made plans to visit northern Scotland in the middle of August, my main hope was that I would see a few whales and dolphins because late summer is a peak time for seeing them. It was always going to be a longshot because as somebody said, "there's a whole lot of nothing out there" and I expected long periods of seeing nothing except the sea, but my attitude is if you don't try you don't see so get out there and give it a go. I certainly won't see them sat at home.

There are three requirements when it comes to seeing cetaceans. Firstly you need to go to the right places, secondly you need to go at the correct time of year and finally you need a huge slice of luck. With this in mind, today was always going to be the big day, a trip out into the Minch with Hebridean Whale Cruises from Gairloch. It was the right time of year and if anybody could get me to the right places it was these guys. Now I just needed the luck.

Just getting on the trip was a mammoth achievement because the bookings go so fast, especially this year when due to Covid restrictions they have been running less trips. For three weeks prior to the bookings becoming available online I had checked five or six times a day, morning, noon and night, it was almost an obsession, hoping to be able to book for today, the 17th August and the only day I could really make this week without disrupting my entire holiday. Finally, just after midnight last Thursday, the dates appeared and at 5:30am the same day I booked my place. Less than 12 hours later the trip was sold out.

I've been on plenty of whale watching trips in the past, especially off Australia and New Zealand, but it was obvious right from the start that this was going to be a trip unlike any other that I have been on. All of the other trips allow you to wander freely around on a largish boat in your own clothing, often with small children wandering around and the Australian trips in particular provide you with a cup of tea and a slice of cake, all very civilised. Not this one. First we had to don full waterproof gear as provided by the company, thick padded stuff to keep you warm as well as dry, and over that we had to put on a life jacket. 

Then there was the seating arrangements. There was only space for 12 people to sit and on our trip we only had 10 to allow a bit more space between us, though I really don't think that Covid could have survived this trip! They weren't normal seats, it was more like sitting on a horse with the seat between your legs with a small hand rail on the back of the seat in front for you to hold onto. There would be no wandering around on this boat, no toilets and certainly no tea and cake or small children. This boat was built for speed.

It was a four and a half hour trip covering a large area of the Minch, the sea between mainland Scotland and the Outer Hebrides. Our route took us from Gairloch to the north end of Skye, then up to the Shiant Islands off Lewis and a little further north beyond that, before turning and heading back to Gairloch.  Fortunately I remembered to plot the route on an app on my phone and we covered about 72 miles in total.

Wildlife in the oceans tends to be concentrated around food sources and so large parts of the trip involved moving at high speed, bouncing over waves with spray crashing over the boat as we made our way to and from favoured feeding grounds. On the way back especially we must have endured a full 45 minutes of this, every 30 seconds spray covered the boat, it was like taking a never ending shower with all of your clothes on and it was relentless. Relentless, wonderful and exhilarating, with breathtaking scenery as we made our way past the islands. It was worth the money for the journey back alone, real high octane stuff, the kind of thing that some people pay good money for minus the whales and dolphins!

The whole trip was just a wonderful experience from start to finish. When we arrived back at the harbour I could barely walk when I got off the boat!

Minke whale probably juvenile.

We saw at least two minke whales, an adult and a juvenile. The animal at the top of the post is the adult. Juveniles don't accompany their parents and these two probably aren't related, they've just been brought together by a convenient food supply. We watched them feeding in amongst the gannets for a good 30 minutes, occasionally lunge feeding. The juvenile surfaced right by the boat on one occasion, so close I could hear it's blow. What an experience.

Bottlenose dolphins, Chanonry Point

Chanonry Point on the Black Isle near Inverness is one of the best places in the UK to watch bottlenose dolphins from land. Today there was a pod of about 20 dolphins which contained at least three calves.

I've just started a week long tour of northern Scotland hoping to see a few whales and dolphins and this was a great start. I'll be spending a few days in the north east around John O'Groats before heading west along the north coast of Scotland to Durness and then dropping down to Ullapool. It can be all very hit and miss with cetaceans and I might spend the next seven days watching the sea, but I've got three boat trips planned which should give me a better than average chance, plus hopefully I'll see a few decent birds as well. Whatever happens it should be a great experience. Today at Chanonry Point, three summer plumage red-thoated divers flew past, a black guillemot, 20 gannets and a few each of Sandwich and common terns.

Bottlenose dolphins, Cardigan Bay

Just for a change I varied my route home from Swansea today and went via New Quay and Cardigan Bay. It's a beautiful route and when you've got most of the day to get home the extra hour's driving seems insignificant when compared to the nightmare of the M4/M5/M6. 

I always try to stop off somewhere to have a look for the bottle-nosed dolphins which frequent the bay, apparently the largest UK population. When I arrived at New Quay there was a dolphin watching boat about to go out with a few available spaces, so for £15 it seemed a good way to spend an hour and get close up to the dolphins, and so it proved. Probably the best dolphin watching trip I've ever been on in the UK and certainly better than spending the hour queuing on the M6 at Birmingham where the only thing I'd get close up to would have been the bumper of the lorry in front.

Even before we got on the boat I'd spotted a couple of dolphins from the jetty, a mother and calf. We saw these very well during the trip and I suspect that most of my photos are of this couple, but there were also at least three other bottlenose dolphins in the area as well and these also came quite close.

Whale watching and seabirds at Marwick Head, Orkney

Photo: Minke whale.

A dull grey day with occasional drizzly rain couldn't dampen the excitement at Marwick Head. Perched on top of a spectacular sea cliff we watched at least two probably three minke whales feeding. The cliffs below held sizable populations of guillemots, razorbills, fulmars, kittiwakes and a few puffins, all crammed into every available space and if any of them dared to leave their ledges they were harassed by marauding bonxies and arctic skuas. On our way back to the car a corncrake called from an iris bed but refused to show itself.

Minke whale at Duncansby Head

Duncansby Head at John O'Groats is one of the top cetacean watching places in mainland Britain and is where I saw a pod of orcas in August 2018. Tonight we are staying near Thurso in preparation for our ferry over to Orkney tomorrow, so what better way to pass an afternoon than a walk along the cliffs to the stacks and then down to the nearby beach at the Bay of Sannick.

This is as wild a place as any I have been, there is a tremendous feeling of remoteness here. The cliffs are full of seabirds, mainly fulmars but also four species of auk, kittiwakes and shag, and they are harassed by patrolling bonxies.

But in my opinion it is that stretch of sea between the mainland and Orkney, known as the Pentland Firth, where the real excitement is, because this is where the whales and dolphins are usually seen.

It didn't disappoint today, I had a nice view of a minke whale breaking the surface several times in amongst a large raft of auks, before finally arching its back and deep diving. Perhaps surprisingly given how many other species of cetacean I have seen, this was my first minke but my seventh species of whale overall, following blue, fin, sperm, southern right, humpback and northern bottlenose.

Also today, a nice view of a Risso's dolphin which was about my fourth or fifth sighting of the species.