Scotland Week 1

Well we are now 5 days into our annual Scotland visit and so far the weather has held out nicely, although a bit chilly & showery.

After a stopover at mums in Liverpool on the Thursday night and a further stopover in Dunfermline on Friday to visit Dee's brother we arrived at our 1st weeks accommodation at 4.30pm Saturday. The first week we can relax here but next week we camp on the west coast which includes Fort William & the Isle of Mull, that should be interesting!
Our accommodation this year is situated on the east coast about 15 miles inland and approx. 30 miles south-west of Aberdeen in a village called Auchenblae. The house itself is the whole east wing of a large estate which is surrounded by a small forest. We're also in easy reach of Cairngorm National Park.
As has become custom, Dee's Gran stays for our first week and this is taken up by visits from Dee's other relations. Yesterday we visited Banchory and today was a treat for me as we visited the RSPB reserve at Fowlsheugh.
The spectacular cliffs of Fowlsheugh reserve are packed with 130,000 breeding seabirds in the spring and summer. Guillemots (pictured above), Razorbills and Kittiwakes breed in large numbers, with smaller numbers of Fulmars, Herring Gulls, Puffins and Shags. Although we spotted all of the above with the exception of Puffins we did see several Artic Skuas which made up for it.
Grey and Common Seals, bottlenose and common Dolphins can also be regularly seen offshore. Harbour Porpoises, white-beaked Dolphins and Minke whales are seen occasionally too. Unfortunately perhaps we are a little too early in the season to view a lot of these woderful creatures as we didn't spot any. On the subject of birds we are also in the company of a small group of Tree Sparrows which reside where we are staying. It's not commonly known that these birds have been on the decrease over recent years are not often seen in England (mostly mistaken for the common House Sparrow).
Tomorrow we visit Balmoral. Maybe we'll be invited in for tea!