I was up early after a good night's sleep in the Focus Hotel in the Loch Garten area. This gave me time for a leisurely breakfast, while allowing some time for the Northern Damselflies to get moving. The first stop was this pool close to the Loch Garten Osprey centre.
There were a few active Northern Damselflies when I arrived. But none were particularly close to the boardwalk that provides access to the pool.
There were a few Large Red Damselflies, an Emerald Damselfly and good numbers of Four-spotted Chasers around the pool.
The next stop was a small pond next to the junction of the Tulloch Moor and Loch Garten roads. This is a good site for White-faced Darters and I wasn't disappointed.
By late morning, it was time to head for Oban. While I had been in Scotland, there was an appeal for a replacement surveyor on the ORCA survey from Oban to Colonsay, Coll and Tiree. Later that day, I had confirmation that I was part of the team. I had a good journey back to Spean Bridge before heading South for Oban. The highlight of the drive was passing Castle Stalker. It is another Scottish Castle that has been built on a small island. It dates from around 1450 on the site of an earlier fortified building.
After getting some food in Oban, I looked for somewhere to park the car for the night. I ended up finding a layby next to sea loch just North of Knipoch. This proved a good choose with a bonus hunting Osprey seen, while I was catching up with some notes in the carb. Soon afterwards, it started to rain. This was a good excuse to turn in early, as I was expected at the Oban ferry terminal at 06:15. To allow time for breakfast and to get to the terminal, the alarm was set for about 04:30. However, I received an even earlier text that morning from the ORCA Team Leader, Bill Anderson, saying the departure time had been pushed back. The schedule had been changed to only visit the Coll and Tiree, whilst skipping the final Oban to Colonsay return trip. The ship's crew had been involved in a search and rescue operation the previous day, after an empty kayak had been found at sea. There were fears that the kayaker was still in the water. Despite a lot of looking, the search teams failed to find anything. The search was called off when the irresponsible owner of the kayak popped up on social media to ask if anybody had found the kayak that he had lost. He didn't have the common sense to inform the coastguards in a timely fashion about the loss. I hope the coastguards read the kayaker the riot act for his stupidity.
I arrived with plenty of spare time at the Oban terminal to meet Bill, as well as, the other surveyors, Connie Remmix and Hannah Drummond. The survey route passes along the narrow Sound of Mull Channel between Mull and the Ardnamurchan Peninsula, before reaching the open sea. The first stop was Coll, where we quickly unloaded and loaded passengers, before heading onto Tiree. We stopped again at Coll on the way back to Oban. Had we included Colonsay, it would have been over fourteen hours on the ferry. With Colonsay removed, it was a more pleasant ten hours.
The weather forecast for the following few days was for more wet and windy weather on the Scottish West Coast. In light of the weather forecast and only being a couple of hours away from Glasgow, I decided it was time to start heading home. We off the ferry soon after seven in the evening and I set the sat nav for my usual layby in the Lakes. I finally reached Lakes around one in the morning and settled down for a final night in the Focus Hotel, before the rest of the drive South. It had been a good Scottish trip, with three excellent ORCA surveys and the chance to see three of the four Scottish speciality Dragonflies (albeit one is now downgraded to a subspecies). It was also good to see some more White-faced Darters: a species I had only seen once before the Scottish trip. I will be back for more ORCA surveys to the Western Isles and to hopefully see an Azure Hawker or two.