A bird of prey, but not a cattle mart to be seen

We are sitting in the restaurant on the CalMac ferry MV Lord of the Isles sailing from Lochboisdale to Oban. It's a very long drive back home once we land, but at the moment it's all smooth and gentle rolling as we traverse the high seas.

The basking shark is the latest tick off the 'must see' list, or rather 'hope to see' list of our trip to the Outer Hebrides.

It's been eventful. The fuel pump fuse on the car blew and ground us to a halt just after we'd seen the bloodbath that was the shinty match (but we're now addicted), and I totally messed up on the days to go to Handa Island to see the puffins. No ferry on a Sunday. But from then on things went well.

At the RSPB bird reserve we pulled into a car park full of very well equipped twitchers.

How these bird watchers managed to put one foot in front of the other weighed down as they were with cameras, scopes, binoculars, tripods, lenses, bird books and fluorescent wet weather gear (very unobtrusive), was beyond me. Especially as the sky was bright blue and not a cloud in sight.

Corncrakes were the prey. Off all the cognoscenti trotted after their guide whilst every corncrake in the area took a dive for cover.

Meanwhile, behind the toilets, a pair of the birds called and, crouching as they ran through the undergrowth, gave us the

perfect photo opportunity with not a twitcher in sight.

It was the same with a sea eagle. John had been advised by our hotel where to fish for brown trout.

In between casts he pointed out to me a sea eagle perched high up above Locheport, arrogantly ignoring the mobbing seagulls and occasionally soaring over the moor land for a tea time snack. It was a brute of a bird.

The Uists are a wildlife revelation. You must beware when crossing the causeways not to knock down a passing sea otter, a pair of whom we saw frolicking behind Benbecula Co-op. Perhaps planning a supermarket raid.

Greenshanks, redshanks, snipe, oystercatchers and pewits abound. What I saw as a black dot from one of the peerless beaches was a Great Northern Diver to John. He was right too. I checked it our in the bird book; not that I disbelieved him.

The one disappointment was not to see a cattle sale. John had got his hopes up in Lochmaddy when he saw a cattle mart.

But Christine at Langass Lodge where we were staying, kindly let us see a copy of her award winning film of a cattle sale, Latha Reic, 'Sale Day'.

And let me tell you, farmers at a Hebridean sale look just as weather beaten and poker faced when they are bidding as those on the mainland.Well mine does anyway.