Eagles on Mull, 22-29 September 2007 (1 Viewer)

I know there are plenty of other reports on Mull, but having just returned from a week's holiday there, I thought I would add my experiences in case they are of any interest to others planning a trip.

It wasn't really a birding trip, but I was keeping an eye out for eagles in particular and succeeded as far as that was concerned, seeing a total of six White-tailed Sea Eagles and three Golden Eagles during the week.

It's easy to get the impression from some reports that you will find eagles at every turn while driving around Mull, but my personal experience is that it requires a degree of perseverance and luck to find them, and there were 2 or 3 days during the week when we didn’t see any. Stopping and scanning suitable areas (small offshore islands for sea eagles and mountain ridges for golden eagles) with binoculars seemed to be the most useful method. Just driving around and hoping they would appear was not a very effective way of finding anything other than buzzards (sightings of which outnumbered eagles by about 10 to 1). If you were only visiting for a day or two, it would certainly be worth considering one of the wildlife tours of the island, as presumably the guides have day-to-day knowledge of the birds’ whereabouts.

The other thing is that the views were not particularly close – the sea eagles were all between 500m and 1km away, while the Golden Eagles were seen from distances of 1.5km and 4km! A telescope is certainly essential for decent views (or even identification) at those distances.

However, if you spend a few days on the island and don’t have unrealistic expectations of the kind of views you might get, then it is certainly a rewarding place for eagle-watching, and a beautiful place to visit even without eagles. I’ll describe all the sites where I saw eagles in the following posts.

Loch na Keal

This is the big sea loch which almost splits the island in two from the west. We were staying in a cottage on Ben More estate at Knock, near the head of the loch, which meant we spent a lot of time in this area. Scarisdale Rocks, a series of small islands which are completely submerged at high tide, is a well-known resting spot for sea eagles near the head of the loch. I looked at these rocks at least twice a day, but only saw a sea eagle there once during the week.

The lady who ran the holiday cottages told us that a visitor the previous week had seen six sea eagles on the beach at the head of Loch na Keal, just south of the mouth of the River Ba. We took a walk along this beach but didn’t see anything, although I did find a sea eagle flight feather on the beach.

The only other sea eagle we saw in this area was flying low over the water at the east end of Inch Kenneth island, where there are a number of small tidal islets and a fish farm.

We were fortunate on one afternoon to see a pair of Golden Eagles from the dining room of our holiday cottage. They were soaring over the hill to the north-east of Gruline House, and landed for a few minutes on rocks near the top of the hill. I managed a very poor digiscoped photo of one of them taking off (it was about a mile away!).

The only other Golden Eagle we saw was found purely by luck as we were exploring rock pools on the south side of Loch na Keal just east of Dhiseig. I had a quick binocular scan of the hills on the north side of the loch, between Killiemor and Kellan, and picked up a soaring raptor being mobbed by two much smaller birds. It was only a speck in the binoculars and not visible to the naked eye, but when I got the telescope on it, it was clearly a Golden eagle, and the birds that were mobbing it were Ravens. I was able to watch it for about five minutes before it disappeared from view.

Loch Don/Grasspoint

This small estuary/sea loch at the eastern end of the island, just south of Craignure ferry terminal is a well-known site for Sea Eagles. We visited twice, with the first visit being to Grasspoint on the south side of the loch. As we were walking from the parking area to the point, I got a brief, distant view of a Sea Eagle flying low over the estuary. It was an adult with a white tail, but disappeared behind a low hill and didn’t reappear. By the time we got to the point, there was no sign of it.

The second visit was to the north side of Loch Don, where a road leads to Gorsten Farm. From the parking area at the end of the public road there is a track which soon splits into two waymarked paths to ‘Grasspoint View’ and ‘Duart View’. The ‘Grasspoint View’ path overlooks the estuary and we didn’t see any eagles from there. However, the ‘Duart View’ path heads north just before Gorsten Farm is reached and gives views to the coast between Loch Don and Duart Castle. Scanning this coast with binoculars revealed two adult sea eagles, resting on rocks. One was on a group of small offshore islets (Eilean a’ Mhadaidh) and the other was about 800 metres to the north. I managed to get a distant photo of the second bird from about 600m away.

Other sites

We had one other Sea eagle sighting purely by luck in Glen Seilisdeir. We were driving north from Kilfinichan bay, just past the turn off to Tiroran, when we passed a carload of birders pulled into a passing place with scopes set up looking across the Glen. I stopped at the next passing place, and scanned the opposite side of the Glen and straightaway spotted the eagle perched in a Larch tree at the edge of a forestry plantation. Like all the others we saw, this bird was an adult.

Apart from the eagles we also saw one ringtail Hen Harrier between Dervaig and Tobermory, on the north side of the Mishnish Lochs.

Good to read your report, Capercaillie. We almost passed in transit. We returned on
22nd September after a week on Mull, staying in a cottage on the Gruline estate. I agree with you that the eagles aren't all that easy to see. I remember before our first visit to Mull a BF member saying just drive down Glen More and look up and you're bound to see one or more! We've never seen one there. Had good views on the rocks in Loch na kael and on the beach on the far side too (the Ulva ferry road). Only seen WTEs at Grasspoint one visit out of four. This year it got to Wednesday and we hadn't seen any. Then the magical morning when I went out to the lochside 5 mins from the cottage and saw one sitting in the very top branches of a pine tree (WTE that is). Watched it for 15 mins. Then later that day we had a golden eagle near the beginning of the footpath up Loch Ba - the crags up to the right. Was your cottage part of the reconditioned building on the left as you go over the hump backed bridge on the way past the farm and the fish hatchery? The Benmore estate has quite a few cottages available, I see. We've booked on the Gruline estate agaian for next September.

So after Wednesday we felt we could relax a bit, especially as we had had two good sightings of otters too.

I'll get round to writing a report soon.

Sandra

Sandra (Taylor) said:

Was your cottage part of the reconditioned building on the left as you go over the hump backed bridge on the way past the farm and the fish hatchery?

Click to expand...

The entrance was between the hump-backed bridge and a cottage right by the road, but our cottage was set back a bit from the road, near the river. It was called Riverside Cottage 2.

I'll look forward to reading your report in due course. We didn't see any otters this time, although I have seen them on Loch na Keal in the past.