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Walking Group One 25th April 2024
Five hardy souls collected today at Happy Valley for the first Hill Walk of the year .The temperature was cool with a North Easterly wind blowing and a hint of rain on arrival.
Off we set heading towards Russadale Quarry, spotting a Buzzard on the way.Turning into the footpath we remained sheltered from the wind all the way to the top of the hill.
The sun was out at the Quarry and a Greenshank was feeding at the edge of the Lochan. Then it was up the Peat road to the summit with spectacular views across Stenness and Harray Lochs, plus a view of the Closed Road beyond the Watch Stone. On the other side we looked over the Flow and down towards the Oil Platform and South Ronaldsay
Then it was back down after a stop for a snack and finally a walk around Happy Valley itself. The Daffodils planted by James and others were looking lovely and the Bluebells are days away from opening. Then it was on to a well deserved lunch at the Pier Cafe, having walked 4 miles and gone up 800 feet (and down again )
The next walk will be on Friday 24th May and hopefully more hills and views.
Keep moving.
U3A Birdie Group -March 2019
by Peter Slater - 19:15 on 20 March 2019
Nine members of the bird group met at the Ring of Brodgar car park at 10am on 20th March. We had a brief scan over Harray Loch and had already counted ten species of birds before we set off towards the ring, but bearing leftwards to go down inside of the fence by the road.
It was quite spring-lIke, with a number of larks singing as we walked along, but with a cool southerly breeze. The main interest of this area is the ducks on the lochs. We saw tufted duck, wigeon, goldeneye and a long-tailed duck on Harray and then, walking back up the side of Stenness, added mallard, gadwall, shelduck and merganser to this tally.
Back at the Ring we scanned the ponds to the north and added teal, shoveler and pintail, giving a creditable total of 11 duck species. We did not do badly with other species either, seeing a total of 21 (mute swan, greylag goose, cormorant, coot, lapwing, curlew, snipe, oystercatcher, redshank, common gull, herring gull, black-headed gull, great black-backed gull, raven, hooded crow, starling, pied wagtail, twite, reed bunting, stonechat, skylark).
All in all, a fruitful and enjoyable morning.
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