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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Capercaillie71" data-source="post: 1015862" data-attributes="member: 32437">Loch na KealThis 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.</blockquote>

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