White Tailed Eagle

The highlight of our first morning on Mull was to be to observe a white tailed eagle with its younglet eaglet on the nest. This was all done under the auspices of the RSPB and the ranger who looked after us, John was extremely knowledgeable.

Unfortunately you are some distance from the nest and most of the time I was photographing with a 200mm lens with a tele-extender. Getting a critical focus to cover the extent of the net from the parent at the front to the juvenile at the back was extremely difficult and I only ended up with a couple of keepers. The white tailed eagle is not a very active bird prefering to go for easy hunting targets and it tends to spends very long periods on the nest, not doing a lot and I have three video sequences to prove this. This meant that I never had a chance to attempt a BIF as the mother only flew off the nest after we had left.

The rest of the day we spent travelling round the island. The single-track roads on the west of the island are very spectacular as they follow the sea lochs for long periods but they can be quite hairy, as my wife will vouch. Eventually we made our way up to the north west tip of Mull where Calgary, with its pure white sand beach is a sudden epiphany. It also had great facilities, as by that time it was early afternoon and we had not eaten. The art cafe provides great snacky food and there is a woodland walk which takes you past several carving and installations by one of the owners of the cafe. Well worth a visit if you are ever on Mull but probably best approached from Tobermory as the road is less vertiginous. See Calgary Art Cafe

We drove on to Tobermory and spent an hour or two mooching round town. We finished off our first day with a great meal at the Fish Cafe which despite its unpretentious name serves some of the best seafood on the island. See Tobermory