Saturday was the day of the Abernethy tour, so we got up early and made the short drive, nearly running over two daft red squirrels on the way in (they were playing chicken in the road, and nearly everyone said the same thing when they arrived at the car park!) Both had beautifully blonde ears and tails! The tour of the reserve was really interesting, but not half as productive for birds as I'd hoped. That said, we did hear a crested tit, see crossbills in flight, and I managed to tick Tree Pipits...

The following day we embarked on stage two of the journey to Aviemore (where we'd opted to base ourselves for the Scottish part of the journey). We stopped for lunch in Dalwhinnie, and as we left the car park I saw two or three largeish birds in the opposite field. We stopped, and got the bins out and identified them as golden plovers, which was a first for me. And then a lovely male in summper plumage put his head up, rendering the previous id efforts almost pointless!

We made it...

Being 'Friends' of Abernethy Reserve, we were invited to this years open day for a guided tour of the reserve. For the uninitiated, Abernethy is right up in the Cairngorms which is a long way from Bristol, so we thought we'd better make a week of it!

We planned to have a short break in the Lake District before continuing our journey north, and booked to stay in Keswick. Arriving in Windermere early on Monday our first bird was a greenfinch which was hiding in a tree but making enough...