Whisky Dippers - Tobermory, 31st March

When I first persuaded the family to take a holiday on Mull back in 2005 it was an easy sell. My eldest son was into Balamory at the time so a five minute spin around Tobermory seeing the places he recognised from the telly, followed by hours and hours of driving round looking for eagles, seemed an eminently fair way to keep everyone happy. These days, now the children are older, and their mother even wiser to my scams, Balamory has lost some of its appeal for them. But this Easter they succumbed to my pester power and we went back.

Some of the residents have apparently got a bit peeved with visiting children taking pleasure in their garishly painted houses, the fun-loving brats. The owners of Spencer's house have even painted it from its distinctive orange to a kind of diarrhoea brown, so we did a drive-by shooting with the camera just to annoy them.

The gaily painted houses of 'Balamory', their embittered occupants resenting every snotty nose and sticky fingerprint pressed against windows by the innocents who have yet to discover the joy of Nintendo.

Not that there aren't other reasons to visit Tobermory, of course. Such as dining at the excellent Cafe Fish, where we ate Squat Lobster which had been plucked from the sea only two hours earlier. I had also read that Dippers frequent the stream flowing past the famous distillery into the harbour so checked it out this morning - cracking views of a bird collecting nesting material. Getting a Dipper in good light is rarely easy as they prefer shaded streams - this one was out in the open, but unfortunately the sun wasn't! A Red-breasted Merganser was the other bird of note in the harbour.