Trail Cameras at Loch Ness

I am back from the Highlands and managed to stop by Loch Ness on two occasions. Apart from a general family holiday in the region, from a cryptozoological point of view, four objectives were achieved. First was to visit the Nessie exhibition at Inverness, second was to talk to the Hargreaves who had a recent sighting at Foyers and thirdly to visit the area of the Hugh Gray photo/sighting.

I will address these in later posts but the fourth and perhaps most important aspect of the visit for me was the use of trail cameras at Loch Ness. Now I doubt I am the first to use these consumer devices at Loch Ness, but in terms of my own personal longer term Nessie hunt, they may prove a valuable tool.

Trail cameras (or game cameras, trail cams, scouting cameras, hunting cameras) have been around for years and are primarily used by hunters, gamekeepers and estate managers to keep track of deer, vermin and other creatures. The reason they are so useful is that they are totally automated and can be mounted, primed and left to scan the area without any human presence which would deter wary animals. The devices work using motion detection hardware which triggers the camera to take one or more pictures. The device may also have infrared capability which allows night time pictures to be taken (which makes sense since animals tend to be more active at night).

These devices have been popular with Bigfoot hunters and are regularly featured on such shows as MonsterQuest. But for me, it was trail cameras hunting Nessie and therefore I headed north a couple of weeks back to install the camera shoreside. The plan was to place the camera in a prime spot, drive on for the rest of the holiday and return 10 days later to collect it.

There are certain parameters that have to be considered in this plan. First is the type of camera.

There is an obvious risk in leaving a trail camera in a public place - it could be stolen. So three things have to be considered - location, camera and fixing. In terms of location, I spend some days looking over Google Streetview to decide on a piece of shoreline which was not visited much but offered a hiding place for the camera yet also an uninterrupted view of the loch. A spot between Foyers and Dores on the quieter southern road was selected which fulfilled these requirements.

Second was the type of camera. I wanted a camera that offered decent motion detection, pixel quality, SD card memory, battery life and night time IR photography but at the same time would not be a hit on finances if stolen. This meant a compromise between risk and reward and I went for the Wildgame Innovations IR2 2mp model which I got off eBay for $50 (£30) and free shipping (if you live in the USA!). Now the best trail cameras will cost more than ten times this but I was not prepared to leave such an expensive camera for 10 days (I do have a better model but that will be for another day). The spec of the IR2 is stated as 2 megapixel camera, IR LED flash out to 25 feet, motion detect out to 40 feet, up to 2Gb SD card picture storage, 4 C-type batteries for long life and 1 minute delay between image captures.

Clearly it has its limitations. Anything beyond 40 feet by day or 25 feet by night will not register but that is the price of not having to sit on the shore yourself all day. But on the other hand, a close up shot from 40 feet would go a lot further in solving the mystery than a blob at 200 yards!

In terms of fixing and securing the camera, here is the in situ photograph. I painted the originally black camera a fetching garden green to blend in better with its environment! I merely strapped the camera to the tree with bungee cords and made sure the camera was primed and aligned with the loch surface (this would usually involve taking a test picture and checking the SD card on a normal camera).



So I drove off and returned ten days later wondering what may have transpired. I was first of all pleased that the camera was still there and had not been nicked! I waved my hand in front of the camera and it dutifully snapped a shot to prove it was alive and kicking and had survived whatever rigours it had been subjected to. In all, it had taken eighteen pictures while I was away and I must say I was impressed with the camera's performance. On the first picture I was immediately rewarded with a picture of a long necked creature. However, it was of the avian type as the picture below shows. The camera usefully added a timestamp to the picture as well as the temperature in Fahrenheit. The bird can be seen flapping its wings to the left and demonstrated that the camera could work in the dark (though since this was more twilight, I don't think the camera triggered its IR flash).




Five more pictures were triggered by strong sunlight and show only a calm loch. Three pictures show nothing and may have been triggered by the branch moving above or a bird flying quickly past. One shows the IR capability and was triggered at 2:43 AM (see below). What triggered this is not known as it is pitch black beyond the rock and branch (possibly the branch again though I would have expected a branch to trigger more often in that case).



Six pictures captured people passing by in their boats as one example further below shows.

The final picture (chronologically) is the most interesting and is shown below. Is it Nessie swimming past or just a log being washed ashore? I would suspect it was a long branch being washed ashore in the wake from a large ship which was mid loch and hence out of range of the motion detection. By the time the log hit the shore, the boat had moved beyond the left of the camera field of view. It is a big branch though, I estimate over six feet long. I also would have expected to have seen more turbulence on the loch surface and some propeller wash. However, it doesn't look very Nessie like either so I won't push this one! This is where a superior rapid fire model would have helped as the motion of the object could have been tracked in successive pictures to aid its identification.



What did surprise me was how the level of the loch surface changed over a short period of time. Compare these two pictures.



In the space of less that two days the rocks visible in the first picture have completely submerged in the second. It looks like the loch surface level had dropped and risen by a good couple of feet! I can only infer this is due to inundation of water from streams due to heavy rainfall.

So no Nessie but a successful trial run of the camera. I hope to be back up in the months ahead to run the camera again and continue to hold out for that conclusive picture!

Yet another Nessie sighting?

Nice to see some sightings rolling in. First the Hargreaves a few weeks back and now William Jobes on May 24th. But what could it be? These pictures give an initial feel for the sighted object but apparently there are more shots which would help progress this case. At a distance of 200-300 yards, an estimate of size can be made from the second photo.

Clearly this does not look like typical debris that flows into the loch like logs, the symmetry of the object looks too well defined and frankly looks like a living creature. The witness says the object rose out of the water but the Daily Mail report does not say how long the sighting lasted or how it ended. In other words, did the object submerge for good? These are important facts that need to be established since not many possible explanations just disappear from view.

As for living things, I don't think otters venture out that far plus the back looks too big. We can discount deer as well.

No dorsal fin is visible unless the "head" can be taken as such. The sei whale recently sighted off Scotland had a dorsal fin set well back but then again a whale would not go long unnoticed in Loch Ness.

Mr. Jobes did not think it was a seal and certainly the distance between hump and head looks too disparate for a seal. Again, we need to see the other pictures and ask some more questions.

Original link here.

"At first glance it looks like another dark ripple on the water.

But study the photograph more closely and a dark hump and tail can be seen poking through the water's surface, or so a life-long hunter of the Loch Ness monster hunter claims.

William Jobes, 62, believes that he may have at last captured the elusive creature on camera after 45 years of trying.

Mr Jobes was walking along the Abbey footpath in Fort Augustus with his wife Joan in May this year when he spotted what appeared to be a head bobbing above the water 200 to 300 yards from the shore.

'I had a wonderful shock,' Mr Jobes said.'I have actually been coming up to Inverness for the past 45 years and I have never seen anything like this before.'

Quickly grasping his camera, Mr Jobes from Irvine in Ayrshire, managed to take a single picture before the 'head' disappeared under the surface.

However, to his delight a dark, hump-like shape broke the waves and he was able to take more photographs of the apparent sighting on May 24 at just after 11.10am.

Mr Jobes is convinced it was not a seal or piece of wood.

'To be honest I know the difference between a piece of wood or a particular animal,' he said.

'I immediately did think it was a seal but it's head was like a sheep.'

However, veteran Nessie hunter Steve Feltham, remains sceptical, although he admits the hump photograph cannot be immediately explained and is worth further investigation.

'The river comes out there and something large could have come down the river and flowed out there,' he suggested."

Book Images

The images accompanying "Photographs of the Loch Ness Monster" can be viewed by downloading the Word file at this link. The animated sequence mentioned in the Roy Johnston chapter is shown below and can be clicked on for an enlargement.

The Hugh Gray Photograph Revisited

Date: 12th November 1933
Time: About Noon
Location: Near mouth of river Foyers
Witnesses: Hugh Gray
Type of sighting: Water/Photograph

This comes under our Classic Sightings series but the difference with this event is that a photograph was taken. And if a photograph is taken, you can bet the swords were drawn out in the pursuit of cutting it up and dumping it in the "hoax" bin. In fact, it already has been but let's see how far we can get with this iconic picture.

Hugh Gray is well known in Loch Ness Monster circles as the man who took the first photograph of the Loch Ness Monster. I say "Loch Ness Monster" because I believe the photograph to be genuine and part of the evidence portfolio. The picture that generally circulates is shown below:




The Daily Record took his picture and Mr. Gray gave the following account to the newspaper having been interviewed by Hugh Mackenzie (the future Provost of Inverness), Peter Munro representing Hugh Gray's employers at the British Aluminium Company and a Daily Record staff member:

"Four Sundays ago after church I went for my usual walk near where the river enters the Loch. The Loch was like a mill pond and the sun shining brightly. An object of considerable dimensions rose out of the water not very far from where I was. I immediately got my camera ready and snapped the object which was two or three feet above the surface of the water. I did not see any head, for what I took to be the front parts were under the water, but there was considerable movement from what seemed to be the tail, the part furthest from me. The object only appeared for a few minutes then sank out of sight."

The tenor of the account suggests some throwing up of spray and water as the presumed tail beat about the waters and hence caused some blurriness around that region of the picture. Mackenzie described Gray as a man highly respected by his fellow workmen, employers and locals. Likewise, the Daily Record had the negative examined by four experts who deemed it as untampered. It caused a stir, was panned by zoologists and faded along with general Nessie-lore as the World entered into war six years later.

Twenty two years on, Constance Whyte visited Hugh Gray in May 1955 who still had vivid memories of that day in 1933 and also recounted five other times he claimed to have seen the monster over those decades. Whyte's account can be found in her book "More Than a Legend".

Tim Dinsdale also recounts in his book "Loch Ness Monster" how he visited Gray in April 1960 and described him as "a most courteous individual" as he took him to the spot of the sighting. He spoke with "complete conviction" about that day as well as maintaining an accuracy of his account. He also added some detail of his other sightings which partly consisted of rapidly moving bow waves with no visible cause.

What remains of the photograph today is uncertain. A few prints have been extant over the years but the negative appears to have been lost forever. In this Internet age, one original print scanned from a book tends to win the day and become the prevalent image. But there are possibly three images currently about depending how you view them.

Firstly, however, was the reaction to the picture from the skeptics. Zoologists of the time summarily dismissed it or suggested unlikely explanations which does not surprise anyone who is familiar with the phenomenon. Leading Nessie debunker Maurice Burton suggested Gray had actually seen an otter sporting in the water and even displayed a picture in his book "The Elusive Monster" (below) to simulate how such an animal could produce the image on the photograph.


Ronald Binns had other ideas and in his book "The Loch Ness Mystery Solved" indulges in some innuendo when he said that Gray was a "leg-puller" and implied that he had hoaxed the picture. How Ronald came to that conclusion was rather circuitous. First he claimed to have identified the spot where the picture was taken and said that there should have been some foliage visible in the picture. He does not state why he assumed the tree growth had not significantly changed in the intervening 40 to 50 years nor how he fixed on the alleged spot.

A further reference to an "A. Gray" from a May 1933 issue of the Inverness Courier is also presented as evidence. This particular Gray was reported as contriving to use hooks, fish bait and a barrel in an attempt to capture the monster at Foyers. Binns speculates he may be the same Mr. Gray and hence a bit of a practical joker. This is in complete contrast to the character references we have stated above.

Steuart Campbell in his 1996 book, quotes Dinsdale as suggesting the photo looks retouched and also mentions the prevalent theory today that the photograph shows nothing more than a dog swimming towards the camera with a stick in its mouth. Admittedly, Dinsdale is ambivalent on the picture and seems uncertain as to what it shows. As a result, he commits neither way to it and simply moves on. However, it is doubtful Dinsdale regarded Gray as a faker given what he said about him.

In terms of analysis, Ted Holiday was the most enthusiastic supporter and saw the picture as a major piece of evidence to support his idea that the monster was a giant invertebrate. In fact, in his "Great Orm of Loch Ness" book, he conducts a close examination of the picture which to him reveals evidence of some warts, a slime sheet, neck segmentations and two appendages. However, the clarity of the photograph is not high and this is partly down to the fact that the creature was throwing up spray at the time as well as some over exposure being present on the film.

Nevertheless, the detail on the film is fascinating and has evoked various explanations. The most recent one is that this is a swan, We cover this in another article.

The prevalant one is that this picture shows a dog swimming. Now this is a case where the front of the brain should ignore what the back of the brain is telling it. The visual cortex is expert at searching for and extracting patterns and this particularly applies to common images which the brain expects to encounter regularly. It is up to the higher brain functions which sceptics champion to process this and reject it as not possible. Unfortunately, some higher brain functions have decided this is a convenient explanation to get rid of this picture and move on.

So I repeat, there is no dog in the picture. It is an example of "simulacra" where an image of something is perceptually superimposed over what is the actual reality. This phenomenon has become popular in news media tales of how somebody could see the face of Jesus on their toast (and then sells it on eBay). The fact that you may be able to see a dog is besides the point. There are three reasons why this should be discounted.

Firstly, and by way of experiment, I found a good photo of a dog swimming in the same posture. It is shown below (copyrighted property of 123RF Limited under Free License). I then fired up my image processing software on Windows to layer this and the Gray photo. The process is simple.


1. Take the dog picture and then layer over it the Gray picture.
2. Resize the Gray picture until it is the same size as the dog picture.
3. Draw in circles to fix where the right eye and nose on both pictures are and align them.





4. Use the opacity slider on the software to vary the transparency of the real dog image to compare and contrast key areas.



What is the conclusion? The Hugh Gray "dog" appears to be missing half of its face on the right. There is no recognisable eye or ear to fill in the complete picture. There is a splash to the right where the ear should be. I don't see how they can be accommodated in the Gray image even by my over zealous visual cortex.
The other problem is that there appears to be nothing recognizable as a stick. There is a very sharp shadow line where the creature meets the water which does not compare well with the actual dog/stick picture. The other problem is the "snout" in the Gray image is more elongated. Note that the real dog has his muzzle raised and spread out to accommodate the stick. In fact a dog will tend to raise its muzzle above the water to aid breathing. The "dog" in this picture appears to have its mouth too close to the water.
The final observation comparing the two layered images is the distinct water line of the object which is far too clear cut for what is expected of a dog swimming.

The second argument against Fido is that the popular version of the Gray image doing the rounds is not the original. In true media fashion, it was retouched to make it more legible to their readers. Rupert Gould says it was retouched in his 1934 book and this is reiterated by Peter Costello in his book "In Search of Lake Monsters" where he lays the blame with the Daily Telegraph for touching it up to emphasize the waterline. This may have been the retouching that Dinsdale referred to earlier in this post.

How this was exactly achieved is not known but increasing the contrast of the image looks to have been part of the process with the resulting over-emphasizing effect on the "dog" image.
You can recognise this particular print by the two scratch lines that radiate from an imaginary central point towards the bottom of the picture. It is best in these cases to get the most original image and as luck would have it another print came into the hands of Maurice Burton in the 1960s which were made from glass lantern slides in 1933 for E. Heron-Allen. Importantly, these contact positives were made from the original negative and represent the best untouched picture of what Hugh Gray saw that day. It is this picture that we used in the layering experiment above and is reproduced below courtesy of Janet and Colin Bord's Fortean Picture Library.





Compare this with the retouched version above and you will perhaps begin to understand the problem at hand. Unfortunately for most of us, the visual cortex having conditioned itself to see a dog will continue to prise a dog out of the picture.

The final clinching and perhaps most important argument is the general structure of the picture. Ask yourself one question - where is the rest of the dog? Look at the real dog picture and you will see a bow wave and its back causing turbulence to the rear of the photograph. Now look at the Gray photograph. There is absolutely nothing behind our supposed dog head. That is because there is no dog body and hence there is no dog head. To get a clearer vista, here is the Heron-Allen picture in the most uncropped form that I could find. Note the continuity of the wave patterns suggestive of no forward motion by the object in the picture.

Now it may be objected that this is a double exposure of a dog but this will not wash either. The Daily Record had the negative examined by Mr. M. Howard of Kodak and Mr. C. Clarke of the Kodak Magazine as a safeguard and they stated there was no tampering of the negative. In the unlikely event they failed to spot a double exposure one would still expect the rest of the dog image to disrupt the clean wave patterns we see.

There is no dog in this picture, keep telling the rear of your brain this important message! In fact, the problem has the potential to compound. On his own Loch Ness website, Tony Harmsworth, explains the dog theory to readers by producing two photographs. The first is the retouched image from the Daily Telegraph and the second is his further touched up version which for experimental purposes emphasizes some dog features in order for people to see this "dog" (see link).

Fair enough, but if you see the second photograph anywhere else, disregard it. In fact, given the propensity for copying and pasting on the web, it will migrate under the pretense of being the original photograph (in fact, it already has on at least one website).

Sadly, this points out the problem with properly critiquing such theories today. I am surprised that this dog theory could have lasted for so long yet the conclusion is that sloppy research sidestepped the issue because it was a convenient explanation for an awkward picture. The lack of Nessie "believers" in proportion to Nessie "sceptics" perhaps explains this but we move on.

So if it is not a dog, then what is the image showing us?

Ladies and Gentlemen, behold the Loch Ness Monster!

So much for my opinion but if sceptics overextend themselves in extracting a dog from the picture then was Ted Holiday equally over zealous in seeing slime sheets and warts? Quite probably Holiday had a better resolution picture to magnify given that silver based film has a higher DPI than modern digital cameras. However, that depends on the quality of the film and how enlarged his print was. This is how he interpreted the image:



1. Neck with head submerged.
2. Neck segmentations.
3. Anterior hump.
4. One of several wart-like vesicles.
5. Anterior parapodium.
6. Sheet of slime.
7. Posterior Hump.
8. Posterior parapodium.
9. A wave.

Examining this in the light of the Heron-Allen image, it is not certain that (1) is a neck though it does appear to slip under the water. Likewise with (2), (4) and (6). However, the light patch marked as (6) and the wave at (9) do look like lighter patches over or on the surface of the creature. I say this rather than defects on the film (such as over exposure) because the two patches create corresponding lighter reflections on the water line below. The two small light "balls" above (5) which were erroneously taken to form the "dog's ear" also look interesting features, possibly water cascades? They can be more clearly seen in the Heron-Allen image above.

The "parapodium" or appendages are certainly there but the overall shape of the animal that Holiday draws is not correct in my opinion. In fact, thanks to this better photograph, we can see that the outline of the creature extends beyond the wave at (9) to the right. In fact, the wave is not all its seems. The "wave" looks as if it is rising then curling down to fall but this is an illusion - it is water spray plus something else.

If we zoom in and display that part of the creature there appears to be some kind of stubby, conical like morphology present which can be traced partly into the spray. There is also a suggestion of something like drips dropping from this feature and creating their own little concentric ripples below. To confirm its solidity, note how this conical feature casts its shadow on the water below.





What it however depicts is a matter of some conjecture but that there is some kind of face present with open mouth and an eye is a reasonable one. I don't think this is another case of the visual cortex filling in the blanks as this is a clearer feature than the barely visible "dog" and it casts a shadow on the waters. The annotation below attempts to describe these features. The dark interior of the mouth and what may be a tounge can be seen with the suggestion that the head is partly turned to the camera.



The spray to the left is real and not a picture defect in my opinion. It is into this water formation that the head disappears and it is hard to make any deductions about any neck from that point onwards though clearly it cannot be of a great length given the proximity of the body. The position of the presumed eye suggests a more fish like that cetecean appearance as whales and dolphins have eyes beyond the end of their mouths and not above it. However, no dorsal fin is visible, though this is not such an issue for fish such as the eel. Thinking of an eel in this context immediately brings to mind Roy Mackal's thick bodied eel interpretation of the creature. Putting this together gives a rough outline of the creature's body below.



The "parapodia" are marked as per Holiday and I have noted two possible water cascades perhaps thrown over from the other side by other appendages. Several areas of shading are noted though it is uncertain whether they are part of the creature's skin. The splash is again noted to the right which obscures the creature's form before we see the opened mouth head. How the torso curves into the water is put in dotted lines as again the water spray makes its curvature into the water unclear. Note how the shadow line clearly denotes a raised hump structure which descends towards the spray and there is an indication of a break in the shadow line between the hump and head.

The creature is unusually high above the waterline and it is not known how it is being propelled upwards as there is little evidence of flipper commotion in the waters around it. It is like Hugh Gray said, it rose out of the water and sunk back down again. In fact this is not uncommon to Nessie sightings and has led to suggestions that the creature has some form of internal buoyancy. Of course, all aquatic creatures need some form of buoyancy else they would sink to the bottom.

Some achieve it through motion of appendages and other by internally retaining volumes of gas or liquid less dense than water. This volume is regulated to cause them to rise or sink. Whether this is being achieved by flippers or other means cannot be fully ascertained from this photograph.

So, the Loch Ness Monster posed for its first photograph in November 1933. Yet despite seventy eight years of scrutiny it seems this "head" interpretation has gone unnoticed all that time. This is down to a combination of the press of the time touching up the picture, the "dog" theory holding sway for at least twenty years and various noted Loch Ness researchers taking us down other paths of interpretation (or just ignoring the picture).

I hope this analysis has put the case back on the table that this is no fake but one of the best pictures of Nessie around today.

P.S. Thanks to my daughter for spotting the "head"!

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com


OTHER ARTICLES ON THE HUGH GRAY PHOTOGRAPH:

The Forsenics of the Loch Ness Monster
More on the Hugh Gray Photograph
Hugh Gray: The Man and his Monster
Is the Hugh Gray Photograph a swan?

Gaelic Folklore and Water Monsters

The connection between creatures such as the Loch Ness Monster and the semi-mythical Water Horses of Highland folklore has long been discussed and held to be a continuous theme by various crypto-researchers (myself included).

A new source of such stories has now been made available online and free to the public by the University of Edinburgh in the form of the Carmichael Watson Project. Carmichael Watson wrote the well known work on Highland culture and folklore entitled Carmina Gadelica published in 1900 but this is a mere fraction of his total research which is now available online here.

The problem is most of what I looked at had not been translated from the Gaelic, so in that sense it is still a work in progress. Nevertheless, entering the search term "water-horse" yielded 14 results which gave stories from the isle of Lewis and Harris and no doubt elsewhere but without their translation, I cannot be sure. I have contacted them asking for clarification on future translations.

The Latest Nessie Sighting

This has already done the rounds today on crypto sites but I like to put it in the blog for the record. Basically it was a long neck sighting at about a mile off. Coloured black, submerged for 30-40s and disappeared after 4-5 minutes. I say submerged as the report does not state that they saw it sink once and for all - can Steve Feltham clarify? Final submergences are important since they tend to discount the usual explanations trotted out for these sightings. A bird will fly off, a boat will just stay there until it disappears from view round a peninsula, etc.

So in this case, the crypto-skeptic response will be "bird". Of course, people mistake birds for Nessie - inexperienced people that is. But these witnesses issue the key phrase:

“We stand here all the time and look out and we see boats and kayaks but it didn’t look like anything we have seen here before.”

In other words, they have experience of watching this same vista many times. They have impressed upon their minds multiple memories of boats, etc at the same distance and they have a sense of proportion as to how big something is at that distance.

Of course, the skeptic may still say "bird". I have a scene that often plays in my mind. I dump the carcasse of a Nessie at the skeptics' feet and say "There's your proof!". To which they reply "Can you prove it came from Loch Ness?".

Original link here - and its Mr. Dinsdale!

Loch Ness Monster sighting reported by locals

FOYERS shop and cafe owner Jan Hargreaves and her husband Simon believe they caught a glimpse of Loch Ness’s most elusive resident — Nessie.

It was while taking a break on the store’s front decking — looking out to the loch — when Mrs Hargreaves and kitchen worker Graham Baine spotted an unusual figure cutting a strange shape through the water.

“We were standing looking out and saw something that looked bizarre,” said Mrs Hargreaves.

“I said to my husband to come and have a look.

“We stand here all the time and look out and we see boats and kayaks but it didn’t look like anything we have seen here before.”

Despite the unidentified creature being quite a distance from their vantage point, 51-year-old Mrs Hargreaves said it had a long neck which was too long to be that of a seal and it was black in appearance.

“It went under the water and disappeared for probably 30 to 40 seconds and then came back up again,” said Mrs Hargreaves.

“It was around for a good four to five minutes. It was just so strange.”

Keen to stress she is not seeking publicity, Mrs Hargreaves does firmly believe what she saw was the Loch Ness Monster.

“It was so exciting,” she declared.

Since August last year, The Waterfall Cafe and Foyers Stores with post office, opposite the village’s famous Falls of Foyers, has been run by Mr and Mrs Hargreaves.

Nessie hunter Steve Feltham, who lives in a former mobile library turned research centre on Dores beach, said he heard about the possible sighting when he popped into the store last week and believes because it was from residents rather than tourists, it is more credible.

“I’m excited by the fact it was locals who had seen it,” said Mr Feltham.

“It’s quite a distance from the shop to the water and they watch everything that goes on there.

“For them to be impressed then there is a possibility it could have been Nessie.”

What particularly excited Mr Feltham was that it was from the exact same vantage point where Tim Binsdale shot the best footage of the legendary creature back in 1960.

“I’ll put the sightings with the other sightings,” said Mr Feltham. “I will also continue to carry out surface observations.”

The sighting was recorded on Wednesday afternoon between 2.30pm and 3pm

An Inverness-shire Water Bull

In my previous blog about the angler on Loch Ness, it was pointed out to me that there was a water bull story just before it! Unfortunately, the loch is not stated as being Loch Ness but a body of water four miles by two. An inspection of an ordnance survey map may reveal some likely candidates but here is the story:

"In Inverness-shire there are many lovely lakes, and many an hour and day have I passed in fishing on some of these. There was one beautiful lake to which I used sometimes to take net and boat, as well as rod. It was a piece of water about four miles long, and one or two broad ; at one end were two sandy bays, forming regular semicircles, with their beaches covered to a width of a few feet with small pebbles. Between these two bays was a bold rocky promontory running into the lake, and covered with fine old pine trees. Along one side was a stretch of perhaps three miles of grey precipitous rocks nearly covered with birch and hazel, which hung over the water, casting a dark shade on it. The other end of the lake was contracted between the rocks till it was lost to the view, while on the remaining side was flat moorland.

Indeed, the hill side which sloped down to the lake had the name of being haunted, and the waters of the lake itself had their ghostly inhabitant in the shape of what the Highlanders called the water-bull. There was also a story of some strange mermaid-like monster being sometimes seen, having the appearance of a monstrous fish with long hair."

After a bit of grubbing around various maps, I think the most likely candidate for the loch is Loch Duntelchaig which is the biggest "satellite" loch around Loch Ness and lies about 3 miles south east of Dores. It seems it once (or still does) form some of the water supply to Inverness. On an older map the loch is named "Loch Dun Seilcheig". Curiously, "seilcheig" is the gaelic genitive singular form of "seilcheag" which means "snail" or "slug". So this loch would appear to be the "loch of the fort of the slug". There are the remains of an Iron Age fort nearby but we wonder what the word "slug" connates. Ted Holiday and other Nessie invertebrate theory fans would be pleased ....