W Scotland - Loch Duich - Porpoise Surprise

On our way back from visiting the Sea Eagles, our journey was held up by a major accident on the main road on the northern side of Loch Duich.  We sat in the completely stationary traffic queue for half an hour and there was no movement, so I got the camera out with the hope of photographing some cormorant and herons as they flew intermittently up and down the sea loch.

 

The sun was casting shadows on the opposite green lochside to the south, the relief producing nice shadows.

An interesting landslip with some very distant red deer.



 

A passing cormorant, the closest any bird came.

After at least an hour of waiting in the still stationary queue, my wife thought she had briefly seen a dark shape out in the loch, and wondered if it was a porpoise which were known to occasionally frequent these coastal sea lochs.  Talking to a local in the car in front whom we discovered crewed on tourist boat trips to see seals and other wildlife, he thought it was unlikely to be a porpoise, and more likely a breaching seal.  We kept an eye on the loch, and a couple of times we saw a dark shape briefly appear out of the distant waters. By this time I was pretty sure it was not a seal and was excited at the prospect of capturing a photo of a porpoise. Keeping my camera with its telephoto pointed at the loch, I eventually caught a porpoise breaching in the middle of the loch, possibly some 700m away, with many shots of just the sea, when I was too slow at pressing the shutter as the animal briefly surfaced.   Occasionally more than one shape was visible in different locations, so this must have been a relatively small pod.



Over a further half an hour I managed to grab these shots, but unfortunately never was quick enough to get a head as it broke the surface, nor did the porpoise come close to the shore.  But what luck (for us but not the unfortunate participants of the road accident) and  surprise to see my first known sighting of these aquatic mammals.



 

Postscript: We learnt later that the motorcyclist that had struck a car travelling in the opposite direction left hospital within a few days of the accident.  At the time it appeared to be very serious, with an air ambulance arriving and waiting at least an hour before it flew off.  The road was closed for over 6 hours we also later discovered.  After 3 hours we decided to turn round and make our return to our chalet near Ullapool via Loch Ness to the East, a considerably longer journey than our westerly route taken in the morning.