It was late in the evening and the light was slowly fading from the croft. We were packing up a few things by the house site and were on our way back to the caravan when suddenly an eerie, reverberating noise split the peace of the night.
We couldn’t see what had made the sound, nor could we identify it. It came again. We could still see nothing.
Did we have aliens on the hillside in the grass?
The sound reminded me of the noise made by one of those long, plastic tubes that we whirled around our heads for fun as children in the Seventies. A high pitched, reverberating, whining rattle. Quite bizarre.
An Internet search soon found the noise. It was the sound of a Snipe. The male of the species apparently reverberates its tail feathers as it performs its courtship ritual in the spring, making this incredible noise.
https://www.xeno-canto.org/595646
We have Snipe! I’m ridiculously excited by the discovery for me of a new bird on the croft. How wonderful.
Ravencroft Skye 