Sightings Galore at Glengorm!

Each Thursday we have a guided headland watch at Glengorm, one of the local Hebridean Whale Trail sites in the north eastern corner of the Isle of Mull. Last Thursday, while we were driving down towards Glengorm Castle, it was pouring down with rain and the visibility was so terrible we could hardly see the sea! As we arrived at carpark, the rain and fog started to clear and we were delighted to welcome a large group of visitors to join us for the headland watch. Many of the visitors had never been lucky enough to spot any marine mammals before so we all had our fingers crossed.

On the walk down to the headland we had lovely views of the Glengorm highland cows and we spotted a pair of soaring buzzards which came down to land in front of us. As we got over the last little hill before the headland, we were all amazed at the views across to Ardnamurchan and Coll. The water was flat calm and the visibility was amazing – perfect spotting conditions and definitely not what we were expecting as we were driving to Glengorm.

Straight away we had many sightings of seabirds including shags, gannets and black guillemots. As we started our species ID talk we were accompanied by a harbour seal and an otter?!?!?!?!? As we were discussing harbour porpoises some of our visitors said they were seeing quick flashes of small black dorsal fins in the water off the point of Ardnamurchan. After a quick look through the binoculars we could all see at least 5 feeding harbour porpoises, which we were watching for the rest of the headland watch. We were also lucky enough to be joined by a smaller group of harbour porpoises later on in the watch! Towards the end of the headland watch, a huge raft of around 200 manx shearwaters arrived into the same area as the harbour porpoises, which were absolutely incredible to watch.

Common dolphins speed past a raft of Manx shearwater!

As we were about to leave the headland to go back to the HWDT visitor centre, we had one quick final look back and noticed a lot of splashing close to the raft of shearwaters. We were so excited when we realized this was a pod of 20 common dolphins as these were our first common dolphin sightings from Glengorm all summer! The common dolphins circled around the manx shearwaters for half and hour before we had to finally drag ourselves away from the headland. What an amazing headland watch!

There’s lots going on from our Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust Discovery Centre; guided walks, activities in the centre and the opportunity to learn from our fantastic team about the amazing whales and dolphins found off our coast.

If you’re in Tobermory, pop in and find out more or click on the link below for more info and how to book.

Back in Tobermory we were joined by a family from our Glengorm walk who were so inspired by seeing all the porpoises they wanted to come and do a beach clean!

- by Bella and Celia, HWDT’s Summer Outreach Volunteers