A new season is upon us

With the sound of drilling, sanding and hammering coming from all areas of the pontoon you can tell we’re coming to the beginning of a new season. With Easter being so late this year the boat refurbishments have taken on a more leisurely pace, however with a number of boat trips starting at the beginning of April last minute work is being done until the late evening. Luckily the weather has been kind to us lately and with the increasing day length this is a pleasure not a chore. Even I have been drafted in to assist with a bit painting! Despite there still being a sprinkling of snow on the mountains there is a definite feel of spring in the air and the animals know it too. Last week, St Patrick’s Day saw a pod of 7 Bottlenose Dolphins come into the bay and spend a couple of hours showing off courtship behaviour. Whilst many locals and visitors watched from the main street, staff from the HWDT jumped on the Harbour Association Rib and went out studying behaviour and taking photo identification pictures, further information can be found on their website http://www.whaledolphintrust.co.uk/news_article.asp?news_id=230. The Eagles have been good to us all winter and there have regularly been 3 seen above the bay and flying to Aros park, reports are that one is an adult bird released in Fife last year and we think the other 2 are juveniles. Also the Tobermory Peregrine Falcons have been making themselves known, they often sit on top of the gallery in the main street, eyeing up the local feral pigeon population. With the regular sightings of feathers on the pavement it looks like they are living up to their name of fearsome predators. Even when not in sight you can hear them calling from over much of Tobermory. Last week there was another first for the year with a single Basking Shark seen near Tiree whilst one of the local boats was carrying out a bird survey in the area. This is an incredibly early sight, however looking into other Basking Shark reports for the year it looks like there have been a few more sightings, have a look at http://www.baskingsharks.org/whatsnews_all.asp for more information. This is just a quick round up of some of the recent sightings around Tobermory. This season we are going to try to keep a weekly report of all interesting sightings and hopefully we will set up a link so that visitors and locals will be able to send us their wildlife sightings. For now all I'll say is that Explore Mull is now open and operating from the Aros Hall on the main street in Tobermory.