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Archived Years _2007

The Season of 2007

The most noticeable thing about 2007 has been the wonderful weather!!! Above you can see Guideliner alone in village bay, in May, in glorious sunshine!

Bird News.

After the disastrous breeding seasons of the last two years, for the auks, kittiwakes and other seabirds, it was a great relief this year to find a big improvement. Last year we saw many puffins and others, having to resort to bringing home such useless fish as garfish, in a futile attempt to feed their young.

This year, the first thing we noticed was the large number of younger birds, particularly puffins returning to the breeding sights. Distinguishable by their bright very fresh colouration, especially on the legs, this increase in numbers seems to reflect the very good breeding seasons of 03 and 04. On Lunga (Treshnish Isles) it is very noticeable that the puffins are often abandoning their usual nesting sites, which are easily disturbed by the increasingly large number of tourist visitors. The birds seem to have chosen the more isolated ridges and slopes to nest - great as it still allows the visitors to get good views, but at a more acceptable distance for the birds.

The water temperature for the last two years has taken a long time to warm up, but this year the wonderful early season weather allowed it to reach 56 degrees F by mid June with the result we had an excellent plankton bloom - providing the much needed nutrients for the small fish and further along the feeding chain the birds. The success of the plankton was reflected in the large numbers of basking sharks which appeared quite early in late May - early June.

The cetaceans have also been good this year, but early on, the majority of the minke were out at the Western Isles, along with large numbers of basking sharks.

We were fortunate to briefly see a migrating young sperm whale on our first visit to St Kilda, as well as regular sightings of Risso's dolphins to the west of the Long Isle. The bottlenosed dolphins in the Sound of Barra have also given us some great displays this year as we passed through on the way to St Kilda.

The weather this year has, contrary to the indications given by the met office on the TV, been very good indeed. While England has suffered the very bad rains and floods, the West coast of Scotland has enjoyed ten weeks of settled and mainly sunny conditions.

Talk of a conspiracy between the Met Office and the English Tourist Board are obviously incorrect, but the impression that the English Met Office TV forecasts give, seems to ignore the fact that Scotland is having good weather, when England isn't. Still that has been the way of things for years! So if you are reading this and planning a holiday in 2008, please remember that Scotland has its own weather and particularly May, June and July are generally very good as is September. August is dodgy, but makes up with great wildlife and flower sightings!

Our first three trips to St Kilda were successful, especially in May when we basked on the Cambir in glorious sunshine and temperatures in the mid seventies! Numbers visiting the archipelago rise annually, although the effect of increased activity seems to be low. There is still no access to toilet and rest facilities on Hirta, which for a NTS site of such importance and with growing numbers of visitors, continues to be a disgrace. The contract for the use of the island by the Range activity monitoring company has been renewed and why part of the conditions made, did not include some compromise access to facilities is difficult to understand. Still the gannets at Boreray continue to flourish and numbers are again up. The puffins on Dun are in huge numbers although we thought we detected a drop around the west Cambir area. Of course the bonxies are thriving to the detriment of the other sea birds. The increased numbers of great skuas all over the Hebrides is very apparent and they are having a noticeable effect on the survival rate of the young auks once they have left the nest and gone to sea.

All in all, things seem to be excellent for the year so far. Good weather, lots of wildlife and great company on board have made for a very enjoyable season. The first 12 day August trip (which I'm on just now) has proved a bit difficult due to adverse weather, but excellent sightings of of whales, birds and flowers have allowed us to make up for the winds!

Sightings of other things - like this otter have also made for a good year!!

Something a bit different this year - we were joined by Santa Claus on his holidays!! Apparently he is a very keen amateur Ham (radio operator) and likes to go to odd places to send and receive radio messages. This, of course is during his "off season" before the wrapping of pressies starts. He goes under the pseudonym of Gyln Jones, and it was only after the discovery of a pair of red underpants with attached tinsel that we realised the deception! He has a very dodgy taste in hats though! This is him making contact all over the world from the small island of Heisker in the Inner Hebrides (ITOL number unallocated - to those in the know about such things), probably the first time anyone has operated from this remote location.

He made some calls from the pier on Muck, and later from most of the islands that we visited! And the beard is genuine - we checked by the usual method!!

Returning from a trip to the Western Isles when we were unable to visit St Kilda (it was not a regular Kilda trip) due to some poor weather and even poorer and highly inaccurate forecasts, we were treated to a visit by a group of about fifty common dolphins.

They stayed with us for over quarter of an hour, letting everyone get marvellous photographs, with the dolphins bow riding Guideliner for ages. Lots of gannets were in the same area feeding on the same shoal of fish, and as often happens, it was the bird activity that attracted us to the cetaceans

One of the great sightings this year has been of a Humpback whale which we spotted at the mouth of Loch Hourn (Sound of Sleat) in early September.

It was a very misty and dreich day and we were looking for minke when one of the guests spotted a "enormous" whale through the mist. It turned out to be a Humpback and we were able to watch it for an hour from distances ranging from 150 to 400 meters, so some views were excellent, others a bit blurred!

It was feeding deep so we did not see any surface feeding activities, just the huge blow as it surfaced followed by four or five appearances before the final sight of the arched back as it dived once again to feed.

These following images are shown for the benefit of Susannah Calderon at the HWDT - hope they help Susie - please let me know. Not very clear I'm afraid but it was very wet and misty, and we tried to avoid getting closer than 150m. Taken with a Nikon d2X with lens equivalent of 840mm @ f5.6 ISO 400 and then cropped by 65%.

At the end of the season we had lots of good sea eagle sightings particularly this one - a juvenile at Loch Don on Mull, (Tag I.D., Blue M) - which was being hassled by two ravens.

We have also been joined on several of our trips, by Tony Dalton, who will be joining us on a full time basis for 2008, and sharing the running of the trips with me next season. An ex RAF and commercial pilot, he is also a commercial yachtmaster. An interest in wildlife and photography make him an excellent addition to the company. He also has a grip of the Gaelic language gained from time spent as a child in Stornoway!

So thanks for looking at this latest addition to the website, another wonderful season travelling around the Hebrides and the Western Isles, superb wildlife and great weather!!

Looking forward to meeting you next year, when we'll once again do our best to give everyone on board a fantastic holiday and extra special wildlife experience.

David & Tony