Bullfinches

Dunrobin woods were glorious in this morning's early sunshine, the more so because the forecast hadn't been good.

Everything here has some fast growing to do in a late-starting, short summer season, so the buds on the trees are literally exploding into life, many of them....

....showing unexpected varieties of colour.

Some of the exploding isn't so welcome. The bracken is coming up apace and there are areas which will soon be smothered in it.

The highlight of our walk was a small flock of four or more bullfinches, a bird that is uncommon anywhere in the UK but is also, here, at about the northern limit of its range. They were surprisingly tame, allowing us to approach quite close, but they spoiled things by firmly keeping their backs towards us.

A Beach Walk

Above the high-tide mark of spring tides on south beach there's an area of sand only reached by storm waves. It's pockmarked by the prints of humans, dogs and waders, a busy area which seems a poor place to choose to build a nest.

However, this is the place a ringed plover pair has chosen to bring up a family. We spotted one of he parents looking decidedly shifty, a sure sign that there was a nest to be found and....

....Mrs MW was quick to spot it. Nest-building isn't the plover's strong point and the heavily footprinted sand around the scrape is a bit of a give-away, which in some ways is just as well as one has to be very careful not to tread on the precious eggs.

This one contained just one of their beautiful eggs. Ringed plovers lay around four, so it's early days for this pair.

A little further along the beach, washed up at the high-tide line, lay a sad sight. While it's a great shame that this is how we see our first gannet on this coast, at least it indicates that they are out there, somewhere.

Feeding on the rising tide was a small flock of knots. Telling sanderling and knot apart is a nightmare but these have greenish legs while the sanderling has black.

The Township of Glen - 2

A few days after locating the possible site of Glen township - see earlier post here - we walked along the single-track road that connects Golspie to Rogart and reached a point where the road gave us a wide view up the Glenrobin glen. The site of the township is just beyond the stone wall so, although we had walked almost as far as we wanted to that day....

....we travelled a little further so we could look straight down on Glen. The visible walls are almost certainly a sheep fank, probably built soon after the township was cleared using stone from the pre-existing buildings.

The main site is to the immediate north of the fank where, in the satellite view, the footings of buildings and small enclosed fields, perhaps used for growing kale, can clearly be seen. Some of the buildings are elongate and divided, and are probably longhouses of the sort we have seen at farmstead NC800004.

Although a fair number of the larger rocks used to build the township are still in place, the structures couldn't be distinguished from the road so, at some point in the future, I'm hoping to return to visit the site, although we were warned by local residents that the field is home to cows with calves; we could also see a black bull with them.

While the people we spoke to knew nothing of the township they told us that the site was called The Monastery, although they did not believe that a monastery had ever existed there. It's interesting that a resident of Golspie Tower had previously said the same of some of the buildings there, suggesting that, at some point in the past, a monastery may have existed somewhere in the area.

Loch Lunndaidh Walk

It's further than we ought to be walking at our age but the temptation to take the track that leads up through the Ben Bhraggie forestry and out onto the open moor is too much. It's worth the sore legs. The sense of freedom as we come out of the confines of the trees and feel the world opening up around us is a tonic, and even the air seems, somehow, fresher and cleaner.

This morning we walked the winding track to Loch Lunndaidh. It's a classic Scottish loch, elongate, at times dark and mysterious, and beautiful, even though it isn't totally natural as the original loch was increased in size by being dammed at its downstream end.

We went there in the hope of seeing an osprey. Three pairs are said to nest around Loch Fleet but, we are told, range widely in search of fish. We didn't see one - we hardly expected to - but then we didn't say too long as the weather is still cold.

We did, however, see plenty of other things of interest including....

....three red deer hinds which, after inspecting us, crossed the track in the direction of the hills, and....

....an old friend, lousewort, just coming into flower and growing on the most unpromising and exposed land.

We walked through woodland filled with bird song, including that of more willow warblers than we've ever come across elsewhere. We also heard the year's first call of a cuckoo, and wondered if it makes use of the willow warblers' nests.

As we came back down into Golspie we found an area of council land in which several clumps of cowslips were growing. Cowslips used to be common flowers when we were young, particularly in hedgerows and meadow land, but they've become increasingly rare, so it was good to find such a healthy population.

Sand Martins

We walked a near-deserted South Beach this morning, the sky threatening with the first rain for some days, and came back along the top of the sea wall between the shore and the golf course, the latter as deserted as the beach.

The golf club obviously uses this small quarry for the sand they need for things like the bunkers. This picture was taken on April 16th and we immediately noticed a change today....

....half a dozen or so small holes which looked very much the work of the sand martins. It's a perfect spot for them, south facing amongst other things, and....

....we can only hope that the club is aware of them and doesn't disturb them by taking sand during the nesting season.

This picture is of two of the sand martins but we've also seen the first house martins over the last few days, the first swallow having arrived on 7th April. Usually, it's the sand martins which arrive first.

Warblers

The warblers are arriving in large numbers now, filling the woods with their songs. I can only recognise two of them, the very distinct chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff of the chiffchaff and the falling notes of the willow warbler. However, while their songs are distinctive the physical differences between the two are small.

Identifying this one on our walk this morning was easy as he was quite happy to continue chiff-chaffing until I was close enough to get a picture. He's brownish-green on his upper parts and buff below, and has a bit of a pale ring around his eye.

If he was easy, the next two, who refused to sing while I took their pictures, were much more difficult. I think this is a chiffchaff, largely on the basis of his colour while....

....this one is a willow warbler, as he shows much more yellow and has pale legs.

There was so much more to see with spring now rushing upon us, including far too many of these in the road banks. It's field horsetail, a rather unpleasant weed which reminded us of a walk from Felixstowe to Newbourne almost exactly a year ago - link here.

Dunrobin Woods at Evening

We walked along the coast track between Dunrobin Castle and the sea in the low sunshine of evening but came back through the woods, full of birdsong and beautiful in the barred light and dark of the tree shadows, passing....

....the strange collection of spires that grace the roofline of the castle.

With light fading we walked along the edge of one of the fields of the home farm, called Dunrobin Mains, seeing a roe deer on the far side of the field and then five others in the woodland beyond including....

....this one which stood and stared at us as we stood and stared at it - magical moments.

The last few hundred metres of the walk took us along the A9 where we wandered quite happily in the middle of the road.

A Forgotten Grave

St Andrews parish church stands at the northern end of Golspie's Main Street. It has a long history but I hadn't visited it until today when, having seen a notice by its main gate announcing that it contains war graves, I went in search of them. The graveyard is in three sections, the oldest being around the church itself while the other two are on flat land overlooking it.

I found three war graves in the second cemetery. The first stone stands away from any others, as if it is being quietly shunned. It commemorates....

....one of many men from Commonwealth countries - Honduras, Canada, New Zealand and Australia - who came to Scotland to work in forestry during the Second World War. C. Torres was one of about 400 who arrived in November 1942, some of whom were posted to Golspie.

It appears, from this article in the Independent, that the Hondurans were not treated well: for example, their accommodation was far inferior to that provided for Dominion units doing identical work.

They also appear to have been rather forgotten in death. Being non-combatants, they do not feature with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, for....

....the CWGC's website is unable to find any record of a C. Torres. Yet the gravestone is very similar to that provided for servicemen and women.

I have several reasons for visiting CWGC cemeteries. One is my memories of the rows and rows of gravestones in the searing heat of Libya and Egypt, beautifully maintained but so, so sad, standing as they did in an empty waste of desert. Another is that, as a wanderer, I have always looked for people buried far from home - like the New Zealand Hurricane pilot who flew into the side of a hill on Ardnamurchan - story here. C. Torres very much comes into the category of people who died in the war a long way from home, and have been forgotten.

The Township of Glen - 1

There is very little sign on the modern landscape of the thirty or more townships which existed in Golspie parish before the clearances in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, so when I have an idle moment I search for them on satellite images. This resulted in the discovery of the outlines of buildings and walls with what looks like a later sheep fank superimposed on them.

It's in the glen of the Golspie Burn to the northwest of Backies, on a slope below....

....the narrow, single-track road that runs from Golspie into the hills and on to Rogart.

The question is - which township is it? Margaret Wilson Grant's map shows a township, appropriately called Glen, in the glen of the Golspie Burn but on the right bank of the stream rather than the left, and further upstream. However....

....I am convinced it is Glen since William Roy's map, dated some time soon after 1750, clearly shows a 'Glenton of Dunrobbin' in exactly the right place. More, it shows that it was quite a large township, possibly spread across three sites.

Loch Fleet

Two power lines run through Balblair wood, their route coinciding with the course of the Culmaily Burn. The interface of woodland and open space creates an ideal habitat for small birds so it isn't surprising that it was here that we heard....

....another of the migrants whose arrival celebrates the turn of the season - a willow warbler singing from the top of a pine tree. It's a glorious song, an aural waterfall of sound, so loud from such a small bird.

The burn drains into Loch Fleet, at high tide this morning when we reached it, so we followed its bank until....

 ....we came to a picnic site, accessed by car from the Littleferry road, which was deserted. There we sat and soaked up the sun while....

....looking out across the loch and....

....enjoying the passing birds, including this small skein of greylag geese, several pairs of shelduck, and a swallow or two, while around us....

....the bumblebees bumbled between the daffodils.