Loch Lunndaidh 2

We set out in unseasonably warm and bright weather this morning along the track which leads to Loch Lunndaidh, through the forestry and out onto the open moorland to the west of Golspie, determined to reach the remains of old settlements strung out along the northeast shore of the loch (see previous post here), but before we could reach it....

....we came upon the first archaeological remains I have located since arriving in Golspie, a short section of wall which appeared to go from nowhere to nowhere - which didn't prevent me from feeling exceedingly excited about it.

We followed the estate track until....

....we came to Loch Lunndaidh. The loch today is a Scottish Water reservoir held back by....

....an earth embankment, so the original lochan must have been much smaller and lower.

The first of two hut circles marked on the Ordnance Survey map just above the dam wall ('1' in red on the above map) were quickly found but, far from being what I had expected - small circles of rock typical of shielings - these were big, the lower one (above, picked out by the stronger growth of heather) was 15m in diameter, while....

....the upper one was slightly smaller. This suggests that they may have been Bronze or Iron Age, and occupied by family groups. In this picture the upper one is in the foreground and the lower one is arrowed.

There were other structures around, including a long section of meandering wall, and there are further structures marked on the OS map, so there is plenty to keep me amused as we explore the area in the new year.

Grocery Shopping

Golspie has a slightly cramped but very adequate Co-Op and a couple of smaller convenience stores, so for a larger shop we drive to Tain, a journey of about twenty-five minutes along the A9, where there is a Tesco, an Asda and - what is more important - a Lidl.

I dislike any form of shopping so part of the 'deal' in Felixstowe was that, while the Lidl shopping was done, I went for a walk along the rather characterless seafront. Happily, not far from the Tain Lidl, there is a recreation area on the far side of which....

....is a very fine pedestrian suspension bridge, the Alexandra Bridge. Although relatively recently refurbished, the whole structure sways alarmingly when crossed, so it didn't surprise me when I found a small notice stating that only two people should be on the bridge at any time.

The bridge leads to a rough track which follows the shore of the Dornoch Firth. The tide today was low and large numbers of waders and ducks could be seen out on the mudflats.

Progress along the shore is restricted by the Tain Gunnery and Bombing Range at Whiteness Sands some three kilometres on, but this still allows a very pleasant hour or so's walking to amuse me while the shopping is done.

Castles, Hills & Monsters

We spent Christmas with some of the family at a house on the Conwy Estuary, looking straight across the water to the magnificent battlements of Conwy Castle. Each day we walked, twice into the hills and....

....once along the coastline to the Great Orme headland from which there were fine views up the estuary.

As we walked back along the sands and the tide retreated it left three of these monster jellyfish. They were barrel jellyfish, Rhizostoma pulmo, a not-uncommon jellyfish in the Irish Sea but not one which would be expected to be active in mid-winter - the Wildlife Trust describes them as coming ashore in May and June.

On Christmas morning we walked into the higher hills of the Snowdonia National Park, in weather which was about as perfect as one could possibly hope for in North Wales, yet we hardly met a soul.

Many thanks to the family for all the work they put in to making these few days so very special for us.

Family group photo courtesy Mark.

Specialist & Generalist

This is a treecreeper, Certhia familiaris, a tiny bird not much bigger than a wren which we've very rarely seen. This may in part be because their camouflage and mode of life, clinging to the trunks trees and moving up silently, make them difficult to spot. Yet we've seen two in two weeks, one of them in the holly tree close to our back yard.

They're real specialists, confining themselves to such bugs and other tiny creatures they can find hidden in the cracks and crannies in tree bark. They're specialists, and they seem to be very successful, though a bitterly cold winter, when water freezes in the bark, can be fairly disastrous for them.

By contrast, we have loads of one of the great generalists, the house sparrow, of which there is no shortage here in Golspie. They've quickly learnt to use the various feeders we've put into the back yard, muscling the tits off the peanut feeders and scrapping with each other and anything else that tries to displace them from the bird table.

Their adaptability has enabled them to live near humans and thus to spread well beyond their Eurasian home range, to North and South America, southern Africa and Australia.

Stories in the Sand

It is such a joy that we have the time now to simply wander along the sands of low tide looking for anything of interest, and one day a simple objective developed - to search for patterns.

Of course, once one starts to notice them one realises how beautiful they are if, at times, enigmatic. This one, perhaps, I can begin to explain. The sea lies to the left of this cobble and its retreat carved a ditch around it, into which water has drained, forming the dendritic pattern.

 However, this braided pattern, about six foot long, I cannot even begin to account for but....

....the last gentle, retreating wave of a falling tide has carved neat patterns around these pea-sized pebbles.

In contrast, the falling tide has washed back-and-forth across this hair-like piece of weed, its movements, like those of a windscreen wiper on a frosty morning, leaving a pattern across the sand.

Some beautifully unblemished stretches of sand hold the memory of the dainty passing of a wader, perhaps a redshank, while....

....a more brutal passage tells the story of someone's very happy hound.

This is the pattern a contented man leaves, like all the others soon to be wiped clean by the tide.

Starling Wars

I brought this specially made bird table up with us from Suffolk hoping it would help to draw more birds in to our garden than when we were there and, to begin with, we were thrilled with the results, with a dozen or more species visiting it.

Sadly, this included starlings which, while beautiful and very successful birds, have no table manners. When the first one came we knew what would happen: it invited its friends and they invited theirs until one day we had no less than four of them woofing the food from the table and more lined up to join in.

So some wire was deployed. As a result, the poor blackbirds, which have very nice manners, are sitting around looking aggrieved, but most of the smaller birds have worked out how to get to the food led, unexpectedly, by one of the robins.

I am not complacent. A war of attrition has started. At present, only one of the starlings has managed to find its way through the wire barrier but, I fear, others will soon follow.

Christmas

The dove is a symbol of peace, so it seems very appropriate that the first dove arrived in our garden just in time for Christmas.

A very happy and peaceful Christmas to all readers.

Old & New

The massive defences of the old....

....are so easily breached by the attacks of the micro-new.

Cuckoo Ray

A small group of carrion crows regularly dispute the pickings along the beach just to the south of Golspie, arguing with the resident gulls, particularly the herring gulls, so if we see the crows congregate at a spot along the beach we investigate.

Their interest the other day was a small ray, about two foot long, which had a pair of very distinctive 'eyes' on its dorsal surface. A quick search on the internet identified it as a cuckoo ray, one of thirteen rays found in British waters, including the common skate, thornback, small eyed, undulate, common stingray, electric, blonde, common eagle, starry, bottle nosed and sandy. I had no idea there were so many species.

The cuckoo ray is not common in the northern North Sea, so we were fortunate to see it.

Small Bird Report

This is the view of our tiny back yard from the kitchen sink, with a bird table, a fat ball, and three suspended feeders visible. We're fortunate that a neighbour has a large holly tree near our fence, and most of the small birds who visit us use this as protection and a vantage point.

The most common birds at the feeders are the house sparrows, who turn up in groups of about six and squabble over who can have first go on the bird table. Some of them have learned how to work the suspended feeders and can even 'hover' to eat the fat ball.

We're not short of blackbirds either, both local ones - the males have orange beaks - and the immigrants from Scandinavia, which have dark beaks.

The first on to our feeders were the coal tits (above), followed by the blue tits and, finally, a great tit. Having shown the way, they've now been rather crowded out by the other birds though, considering their size, the coal tits can be remarkably pushy.

A great deal of the fun goes out of feeding the small birds once the starlings arrive. At first they come singly but now they're here in ravening flocks. They're a very smart bird but they're loud, quarrelsome and bullies.

There are some notable absentees. We have yet to see a siskin in Golspie, and the chaffinches, which were the most common bird in Kilchoan, are only to be found in small numbers by the Golspie Burn. Yellowhammers, too, are missing: again, they were a common bird in Kilchoan but they really belong in open fields, yet had disappeared from our area of Suffolk.

That said, we're thrilled at the number of small birds we have, such a change from Suffolk where we were often lucky to see more than half a dozen small birds in a day. Their numbers may be explained by an apparent and surprising absentee from the area - the domestic cat.

Winter Sunshine

Walking along the beach to the southwest of Golspie today the sun was almost painful in our eyes. It seems we, in what should be the bitter northeast of Scotland, are blessed with fine weather while the south of England is flooded, though I am sure we will yet see some more appropriate weather.

We have a wide choice of walks yet, in such weather and with the tide right, we are constantly drawn back to the beach. We had the additional privilege today of being able to walk along a beach shared by only three other people in the two hours we wandered it.

For some time we sat on a rock and watched and listened to the waves break, a monotonous but soothing sound to which, if we ever get the opportunity, I would love once again to fall asleep.

We watched, and were watched by a seal. The denizens of the beach were all very much at peace in their sunshine world, including....

....this grey heron, which seemed quite happy to allow us to approach close, and equally happy to tolerate a redshank on an adjacent boulder.

Suds Along the Sands

Maybe Friday is washing day in Golspie, or maybe it's just the long, slow, frothy tumble of the waves coming in to the sandy beach, but suds covered the foreshore in front of today's rising tide. Sadly, the tide also brought in and deposited....

....a fully biodegradable dead guillemot, the first of what will probably be many dead birds this winter.

Golspie's beaches are remarkably clean of human rubbish, to the extent that a single errant Walkers crisp bag not only sticks out but is irritating. Why are we so careless with our litter? Or, perhaps more practically, why don't we ensure that things, like this, which are very likely to be so carelessly cast aside, aren't as fully biodegradable as a guillemot? And, incidentally.... what on earth is the connection between a pretty girl, snowflakes, prawn cocktail and a competition?

Sunset

This picture was taken at a quarter to three from the coast path to the northeast of Golspie, with the sun already setting across the Dornoch Firth, the official time of sunset today being 15.27.

We had passed Dunrobin Castle, which may be a strange cocktail of styles added over the years, so it more resembles a fairy castle than a serious fortress, but it sits on a strategically important site whose occupation dates back to Pictish times if not earlier. At this point the flat land along the coast, which the path follows, is at its narrowest, with the ground rising rapidly behind, so whoever holds the castle controls movement north-south along the coast.

Today few people follow the path, mostly casual walkers like us or dog-walkers or the occasional more serious walker on his/her way to or from John o' Groats, but to pass through this gate is to tread in the footsteps of thousands of people who have used this ancient highway over the centuries.

It was wonderfully peaceful today, with flocks of birds - mostly gulls and crows - forming and then breaking up into small groups which set off for their roosts for the night.