A Hummingbird's Heartbeat

There are times when a fact - in this example, read in last week's 'New Scientist' - sits up and slaps me in the face. According to an article about Andean hummingbirds, they are capable of lowering their body temperature to 4C in order to reduce heat loss during bitterly cold nights. This was interesting enough but the article added that a hummingbird's normal heart rate is over 1,000 beats per minute. My heart, when I'm not excited, seems to function at just  over 60. How on earth does a tiny, tiny organ like a hummingbird's heart manage to beat at that rate?

Our most recent encounters with hummingbirds were in British Columbia, Canada. The top picture is of a black-chinned hummingbird, the lower of a calliope hummingbird. I thought it was amazing enough that these two tiny scraps migrate thousands of miles each year to winter in the southern part of North America, but my mind would have been blown away had I know about the rate at which their hearts were beating.

Gannets

We stood for some time this morning on the beach at Littleferry looking across the Dornoch Firth towards Tarbat Ness lighthouse, with only the first breaths of a breeze fingering the sea. At first the sea birds, mostly gulls, seemed to be flying aimlessly but that changed....

....with a slight rise in the wind and the arrival of gannets, just a few at first but then more and more, so we watched....

....the way they folded their wings and plummeted into the water, but they reappeared quickly so whatever they were hunting was swimming shallow, possibly sand eels.

We also noticed that many of the gannets weren't white but either brown or speckled, so these were juveniles or birds in their first full summer, for whom the shallow, protected waters of the firth must be an ideal nursery.

Small Bird News

It's  only about a fortnight since the last Small Bird News but a great deal has been going on in their little world. They're a source of endless interest - though Mrs MW is not amused that the sparrows are still eating her misembryanthemums. However, at least the sparrow population has reduced, largely through our almost abandoning grain feeders, which they monopolised.

The same cannot be said for the blue tit population, which seems to go up by the day, encouraged by our policy of increasing the number of (patented) peanut feeders, most designed so the sparrows can't access them.

This blue tit seems to manage the difficult landing manoeuvre required for these feeders even though he has only one leg.

Another species whose numbers are increasing, but which used to be quite an unusual sight, is the coal tit. If anything, they are even more intelligent and inquisitive than the blue tits. They've been the first to find their way in to this, the only seed feeder we currently deploy - there are small entrances to right and left.

The coal tit featured in the above picture is the 'normal' colour, but....

....we have a new arrival which seems a little more coaly than the others, his breast and tummy being mottled black. I have searched on the internet and he does seem to be quite unusual.

Another species which is around in larger-than-usual numbers is the pied wagtail, mainly because they've had a good breeding year - this is a juvenile. Usually they stick to the wide expanses of neighbouring grassy playing fields but some of them have taken to coming in to our front garden, perhaps because we have recently enclosed it with a wooden fence which makes it more protected, warmer and, therefore, more insect friendly.

The robins continue to entertain us, though what is going on is deadly serious. The newly-enclosed front garden is prime robin territory and we think that this one, the graveyard robin, is making an attempt to take it over from the resident back-garden robin. At the moment there's a great deal of singing, posturing and chasing going on but robins can become involved in serious fights.

Aurora

I've been keeping an eye on the excellent AuroraWatch app and had noticed some minor activity, but yesterday evening there was enough of an event to make it worthwhile going out into the cold night to see whether anything was visible.

A very faint aurora was there but, by the time I had gone indoors to collect the camera and fit it to the tripod, the lights had subsided and the sky was soon covered by cloud; and, although I stayed out for some time, they refused to clear.

As can be seen, the event continued for some time. It's the low point on the sunspot cycle and we have only had one recent amber event, but it's good to know that even the relatively weak events are visible from Golspie - clouds permitting.

Short Stories in the Sand

The smoothed sands of low tide are like a gigantic blank sheet of paper upon which a million short stories are written.

Here is one. A wader, most likely an oystercatcher, is walking along looking for his breakfast when something - and I would love to know what - tells him to plunge his long, orange bill into this very precise spot and seize.... well, perhaps he didn't find anything, but perhaps he did, and a small, insignificant life was brought a sudden and premature end.

 

Here's another. A bird, perhaps again an oystercatcher, is flying low over the sands when, again for reasons I cannot even imagine, he chose this particular spot to land but, as he touches down, he does a small poop before hurrying on to start his hunt for food.

Our lives, just like the oystercatchers', are composed of similar sequences of mostly inconsequential events; they happen and, even if we noticed them, we probably forget them; and the tide comes in to smooth the sands for another day.

A Retirement Dream

 

Sometimes I wish we had retired to a simple house like this, built of mangrove poles and makuti thatch and raised on concrete posts to deter the white ants from eating the whole structure, and I wish....

....we'd had this view from our front veranda, looking out across a coral reef to the ngalowas passing along a distant Indian Ocean horizon, and I wish....

....we'd had a beach like this along the front of the house off which we could have swum in warm waters every day of the year, and I wish....

....that one of the coconut trees along our frontage had been heavy with weaver birds' nests so that....

....I'd have been obliged to build a bird bath for them to splash around in each late afternoon and.... 

....I wish we'd have been able to sit each morning on our veranda enjoying a cup of tea while the sun heaved itself out of the Indian Ocean and....

....sat on the same veranda each evening enjoying our sundowners while it finished its daily journey by sinking into the bush behind our house in a riot of tropical reds and oranges. 

It's where I have dreamed that we would pass our later years but.... well, the world simply doesn't work on dreams and, even if we had had the opportunity, we'd have been far from our family and good medical services and the requirements of a modern life, like the internet. So, dream as I may, I'm content that the option didn't arise though.... perhaps I wish it had.

Pictures taken in Tanzania.

Low Tide at Littleferry

We drove to Littleferry this morning to enjoy the beach at low tide and because it was a beautiful morning, of the sort that have been too rare this summer. It does seem that this east coast has a dull, cool summer and reserves its sun for May and September - sun gloriously warm when it does show its face, even though we are so far north.

Three seals lurked in the strong outgoing current at the mouth of Loch Fleet perhaps hoping for a run of salmon, this current also seeming to wash all the sea birds out to sea, so we saw.... 

....on the exposed sandbanks eiders, cormorants, mergansers, several gull species, terns, oystercatchers and, when we set off to walk....

....along the miles of empty low-tide sands stretching away towards Golspie...

....the first sanderling of the year, just four of them, which allowed us to approach to within ten metres.

It does make one wonder where they've been for their summer holidays that they have so forgotten their fear of humans.

Among the shells and sea potato tests we found one reminder of 'high summer' - a lion's mane jellyfish with its tentacles neatly arranged beside it on the sand.

It's Time for the Fungi

Autumn is the time when the fungi come into their own, and there are some spectacular ones in this area, including this magnificent specimen of fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), which was about 6" tall, described on one website as "the home of fairies and magical creatures and a lover of birch woodland, where it helps trees by transferring nutrients into their roots, but if eaten can cause hallucinations and psychotic reactions." We found it in Golspie glen but have also seen less well-preserved specimens elsewhere.

This is a puffball, the largest about 2" across, which seems to like growing in small groups. It's called a dusky puffball, Lycoperdon nigrescens, and unlike fly agaric, it's edible.

This perfect puffball, the size of, and looking just like a tennis ball, may be the common puffball, Lycoperdum perlatum.

This is the appropriately-named parasol mushroom (Macrolepiota procera) which is described as good to eat. It, and the preceding two puffballs, were all growing on the links at Littleferry.

Low Tide

Mr Curlew stalks the low-tide line checking the territory he'll rely on for food this winter, finding others who have recently returned to Golspie's beach including....

....redshanks with their legs still startlingly orange and....

....dunlin whom he doesn't mind because they don't probe his private mud but work their way through the seaweed-covered rocks, but they're joined by....

....some unlikely intruders including a small flock of 'brown jobs', perhaps pipits, several pied wagtails, and....

....a rook who really oughtn't to be here but instead probing farmers' fields for earthworms.

Haar

Afternoon temperatures have soared to a dizzy 23C over the last few days but the bright sunshine has been tempered by a persistent haar rolling in off a cool North Sea to wash across the beaches and....

....into the fields that run along the back of them, then filtering through the forestry....

....into fields which rise behind, where thin sunshine struggles to light the oatfields which have recently been harvested, before finally....

....lapping against the higher hills.

The haar persisted last night, swirling beneath the street lights like one of those old London fogs yet, looking up, the stars were brilliantly clear. By this morning the sun shone brightly, glittering off the haar's legacy - a heavy, autumnal dew.

Bird Gatherings at Littleferry

To Littleferry this morning for what we're trying to make a regular weekly visit, to find the sands at the entrance of Loch Fleet crowded with upward of two hundred oystercatchers - such collections being called, apparently, a 'parcel' of oystercatchers. There seems to be a great gathering of this species at this time of year following a summer of independent pairs rearing their young but we've never seen this number before. 

As we walked round towards the beach we, and small flotillas of eider being washed in by the tide, were treated to a magnificent display of synchronised flying over the mouth of the loch by a group of waders which....

....look to me like dunlin. Certainly this is a time of year when species like this, common in small groups along the beach during last winter but absent though the summer, are returning.

Further aslong the beach we topped to watch some gulls work themselves up into a frenzy of feeding, perhaps on a shoal of bait fish, to be joined by one or two gannets (top right) - which we were so pleased to see as the only gannet we've found here until now had been washed up dead.

Littleferry beach may have been bright with birds but it was as good as deserted of humans - we saw only three in the time we wandered along it - which gave one member of our party the ideal opportunity to indulge in a trick which her maternal grandfather used to perform.