Visiting the Ospreys

We awoke to a rainy day in Boat of Garten; in fact the rain there was light compared to some other parts of Scotland which were being lashed with torrential rain. We all went to the Rothiemurchus Estate where we went clay pigeon shooting. This was a first time experience for me and it was great fun. We got expert instruction from Hugh, who is an expert marksman. Alison sportingly pressed the button to make the clays fly out when Hugh said "Pull!"; I say sportingly because she doesn't enjoy shooting but still goes along on a regular basis to send up the clays for Hugh. Every place that we shot from was a bit different, which made it interesting. For example in some places the clay was projected upwards, in some across the way, all at different speeds and trajectories. With Hugh's patient coaching James and I both managed to hit the clays some of the time - one or two out of five shots - which we were quite pleased with, as novices. The last place we shot from was called "rabbits" because the clay was fired out across the ground and rolled and bounced along at the speed of a rabbit. I really enjoyed it; I would never ever want to shoot a real creature and I have never allowed the boys even to have toy guns (although they made their own out of lego or tree branches!) however this was like developing a skill and challenging yourself to improve. 

Back to the cottage for lunch then we went for a walk in the rain to the Osprey Centre at Loch Garten. It was a forty-five minute walk each way and we got pretty wet, but it was nice to get a walk and lovely to revisit the Osprey Centre. When I was walking up the slope to the visitor centre (a bit behind the others because I had just visited the toilet), a girl on a bicycle stopped beside me to photograph some mushrooms. She is one of the volunteers from the centre and she told me that it is called the Devil's Tooth fungus and it is quite rare. It is edible but has a very peppery taste. I wish I knew all about the things I see on walks like she does, it's so fascinating. There are two Osprey chicks this year called Tore and Boyack, they hatched in May and can now fly. Their Mum EJ was sitting up on a branch and looked rather cross about the wet weather, she kept having to shake her head to get rid of the raindrops! We saw lots of other birds such a blue tits, bullfinches, greenfinches, and a woodpecker. We also saw a red squirrel and even a wee vole scurrying about under a tree. Back at the cottage (where there are also a huge variety of birds at Alison and Hugh's bird feeder) we had coffee and a chat then we said our farewells and set off home. It has been a really lovely weekend.