Sea Eagle

Or 'White Tailed Eagle' if you want to be pedantic... Last day blues always wind up with us not sure what to do. The old legs didn't feel up to a hill walk, but in the end we found some climbing to do anyway. Driving to Talisker we set off on the short walk to Talisker Bay, stopping on the way to chat to some twitchers with spotting scopes out, and trained on a Golden Eagle nest high in some rocks - they very kindly offered us a look through at the two chicks in the nest (the adults having gone out, presumably to source some food). The shoreline was 'crowded' (okay, there were about a dozen people) so we headed upwards, above cliffs on the south side (the opposite side from the goldens).

The views were once again stunning, and we had them all on our own. Then Mel spotted a big raptor out over the sea. With tele lens and binoculars trained on over the water it became clear that it was a sea eagle, the UK's largest bird of prey, with a wingspan over 2 metres. We've seen them before, but always even more distant than this, and only fleetingly, whereas this bird treated us to two effortless gliding fly-bys. Okay, so it's not the clearest shot, and is heavily cropped, but after the otter and basking shark earlier in the week (neither of which we'd seen before despite numerous trips to the island), this really set things off nicely, and we clambered back down the high, steep slopes in cheery spirits despite the advancing rain (we'd started down after seeing the clouds and darkness moving over the Hebrides).

We drove about a wee bit after that, seeing some sights, but just generally wasting time randomly before heading back to the cottage to pack and eat.