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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marcus Conway - ebirder" data-source="post: 1221585" data-attributes="member: 26747">Day Two, part one - On Top of the WorldHaving checked the forecast we decide to make the best of 'a long day with clear spells'. However, on arrival it appears the peaks haven't read the script and the cloud base is at about 850M, some 200M below our climb today - Cairn Ban Mor. We decide to continue with the plan, having ticked red deer, roe deer, peregrine, woodcock and osprey en route our spirits are high.The lower climb is to the song of tree pipit and wiollow warbler yet as we look upwards we can see that some snow has been revealed. It seems a long way away. However, just two hours later and a packet of very Scottish Shortbread demolished we are at the snow line. Unfortunately the cloud base is building and visibility dropping. Still we plod on. We check the fell and the plateau wihtout any luck. We are starting to worry. A quick call to Dan Pointon reassures us and after another 30 minutes James picks up three boulders that all have heads - Ptarmigan. Sweet. We watch them for about an hour and they grow quite accustomed to us. The cloud base lifts and we are afforded crippling views - James complains he is having trouble focussing on them they are so close!We decide to leave them be and consider our decsent. No sooner have we walked another 100 yards than I pick up on a wader. Yup, it's the mountain specalist the Dotterel. A female singing (a repeated piping sound) to its mate somewhere on another peak. This is immense. We are bathed in sunshine looking down on the world. It was made to feel more special by actually climbing the mountain, getting to the birds altitude made it seem like we were entering their domain, and the lack of people made it seem like such an intimate experince with the ptarmigan. We made the decsent and we're back at the car by 3 PM. That means there is another 8 hours of dayight left up here! A bit like having a second birding day</blockquote>

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