Watching the gannets sweep over the Sound of Mull and then suddenly tip their wings and plunge into the sea will be one of the memories of summer. At times we have seen as many as twenty manoeuvring in the air to attack a shoal of bait fish in the bay just below the house.
The ringed plover will always be, for us, the bird of the beaches at Sanna, allowing us to approach to within a reasonable distance before taking flight. Occasionally they didn't fly, feigning injury, the reason usually being....
....something small and furry and running fast.
Red breasted mergansers aren't difficult to spot in Kilchoan Bay but this pair will remain in my memory for having landed no distance from where I was sitting and seeming quite unpurturbed by my presence.
The curlews gather in flocks in the autumn and then spend their winters probing the soft ground in the croft fields before splitting into pairs in the spring. They're wary birds and difficult to approach, so obtaining a half-good picture has always been a challenge.
However, the birds I will remember from the Ormsaigbeg shore below our house, the birds which seem to represent this place, are the ever-cheerful, ever-sociable, always-smartly-turned-out oystercatchers.
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