Red Squirrels - Still Hunting 2

We set off this morning, once again, in search of the red squirrel population which is supposed to be in the woods above Dunrobin Castle.  To reach the area where the young mother and her son reported seeing them on Friday we walked through the castle grounds and crossed the railway line at Dunrobin Castle station, now one of those lovely 'request' stops on rural lines.  It was built specially for the Duke of Sutherland who, surprise, surprise, was on the board of the railway company.

We then met a couple walking their dogs who gave us further directions.  They described where the feeding boxes were but said that, although they passed them fairly frequently, they had yet to see a squirrel.  Despite this encouragement we followed their directions and somewhere we went wrong, which resulted....

....in a long walk down the track that leads to Big Barns.  There we spoke to the owner of an historic cottage which had once been a barn for the Sutherland estate who put us on the right track to the feeding boxes - but said that he hadn't seen any squirrels here either.

He described numerous feeding boxes but we only found two and, despite our efforts, didn't see a squirrel at them although....

....a blue tit was doing its damnedest to get at the mixture of nuts and seeds on display.

As we walked disconsolately home we were passed by the man from the cottage in his car.  Had we seen the squirrels? he asked, because he had just spoken to a family who had, minutes before, seen them scampering around in the branches of a Douglas fir near the feeding boxes.

We didn't have the energy to go back to the point he described but will return once we've recovered from this 4.5 mile walk.

Red Squirrels - Still Hunting

We're still hunting for the two groups of red squirrels which were introduced into the area at the end of last year.  We've done some asking around and are now confident we know where to find the group which is living behind the Lawson Hospital at the southwest end of town but today we went searching for what are the most northerly group of red squirrels in Scotland.  They are reputed to be somewhere along Queen's Drive, a track which runs through the forestry at the back of the town and northeastwards along the upper slopes of Dunrobin woods.

It was a walk of some four and a half miles on a beautiful morning during which we had some fine views southwards over the town but we gave up when we found no signs of any squirrels.  However, we fell into conversation with a young mother taking her teenage son for a walk on the instruction of his teacher, after which he had to write about what he saw, so we told them about the possible location of the red squirrels.  As luck would have it we bumped into them as we walked home.  They had seen a squirrel.  We just hadn't walked quite far enough.

So we had to be content with a small fungus as our most exciting find.  At least it is one which I have some hope of identifying: it may be a conifer mazegill which, as the name suggests, grows on dead conifer trees.

On our way home we broke for a rest in this quarry, from which the estate is extracting aggregate.  The N-registration harvester dumped here is still in remarkable condition but what interested us was that the excavations had turned up what was probably the rubbish heap for one of the now-lost croft houses, in which we found....

....this rather neat little glass bottle.  It's about 3" high and has, on its side, the words 'Valentine's Meat Juice'.  This was a meat extract invented by a Mr Valentine in the 1870s which was supposed to be good for people who needed to recover from serious illness, though, according to this site, the potion may have contained rather too much arsenic.

The Birds of Strath Lunndaidh

How lovely, on our return to Strath Lunndaidh yesterday, to be greeted as we set off through the forestry by the call of a song thrush and, almost as soon as we emerged onto the open hillside by....

....a skylark who circled and sang low above our heads.  He was one of several skylarks, two of the others....

....being intent on chasing each other around the new planting and, when one caught up with the other, indulging in some....

....fierce aerial combat.

At the end of each winter the males return to these upland areas first, to establish their territories and then to spend hours flying above them, singing their beautiful song.  This requires great stamina and the better the male's display and territory, the more likely he is to attract a mate when the females return for the breeding season, which starts in March.

While we were watching the skylarks' antics a skein of geese rose noisily from Loch Fleet to fly across a grey sky, the clouds only beginning to break up as we reached Loch Lunndaidh.

Much of the land above the loch was put down to trees a few years ago and it was in the conifers that we heard a call which we recognised from our walk on Tuesday: these rather isolated forests are already home to a pair of bullfinches.

When we came to the furthest point of our walk and stopped to listen to the silence across the loch we spotted a lone swan. There was a pair here a year ago so we hope that this one will soon be joined by its mate.

Return to Loch Lunndaidh

Todays' walk took us up the forestry track from Drummuie into the open moorland which has recently been planted with, mainly, conifers - see earlier post here. The young men who did the job have been good about leaving the place tidy, as can be seen....

....by the pile of bags which contained all the young trees - each bag here is tightly packed with other bags.

While the planting has mainly been across the flat land on the floor of the strath, in places they planted up the hillside - look carefully at the paler area of bracken-covered hillside which has been planted, while the darker, heather-covered slopes have not.  There's good reason for this: the bracken has invaded land which the old farmstead improved as a field - see post here.

Passing through the gate in the top picture of this post used to be the moment, not a year ago, when we felt we were walking out into the glorious open scenery of the Highlands but now the landscape is divided up by fences. Fortunately, the Sutherland Estate is fairly good about putting pedestrian gates through these fences but one still walks with a sense of enclosure.

The reason for the fences is, of course, the red deer.  The new planting is protected by these deer fences so, although we did find deer tracks inside them, we now have to walk some distance before we come to land which is still freely roamed by these magnificent beasts.  We noticed how they seemed to leave their equivalent of calling cards along the fences.

Our walk ended, appropriately, at a fence. We stood for some time looking though it to Loch Lunndaidh listening to one thing which fences cannot enclose, the silence.

Bullfinches

The silence of winter forestry can be oppressive. This morning, when we walked through the plantations below Beinn Bhraggie as the first of the day's rain came on, we met no-one, not a bird sang, and not an animal moved until....

....a beautiful bird decided to make our day by sitting at the side of the path and posing for us.

Bullfinches are not easily worried by quiet, slow-moving humans. This one was within five metres of us while I took pictures and his mate....

....was even closer for this.

They were, it has to be admitted, very intent on feeding. They spent most time on the dead flowers of the ling, presumably removing and eating the seeds. They also spent time doing what makes them so unpopular with gardeners, farmers and, in particular, owners of fruit trees, which is....

....picking off the young leaf shoots and flower buds.

I forgive them all their sins for the pleasure they gave us this morning. Unlike so many British birds, which have dull plumage, these are positively tropical in their bright colours, and it's good also to have a bird species where the difference between male and female is obvious. 

Sadly, the species has been in decline, having lost over a third of its British population over the last fifty years, though there are some signs of recovery.

Into the Sun

In contrast to the brisk pace of yesterday's walk we took a much more gentle one this morning, wandering along the coast to the north, no hurry, just a chance to soak up the warmth of glorious sunshine even though, in the shadows, last night's ground frost still lingered.

We noticed several things which we haven't seen for months, like gulls congregating to feed on bait fish offshore - though the gannets were missing from this feast.

Some of the waders are beginning to pair up, oystercatchers and ringed plovers (above) along the shoreline, bringing back memories of searching, very carefully, for their nests last summer and the sadness when so many, for all their efforts, were either destroyed or abandoned.

There were other memories brought to mind. Just to the right of this log is the single dried stalk of an orchid, a peculiarly lone orchid we found right by the sea - see a post from last June here - when the remains of most orchids have long ago been destroyed. It would be so good if, when we come here again in June, there were several orchids in bloom.

Then, as we climbed the hill past St Andrew's churchyard, we saw the first crocuses of the year. 

Littleferry

We drove to Littleferry this morning for the first time in several weeks, timing our arrival for low tide and finding the water pouring out of Loch Fleet so fast that....

....this lone goldeneye couldn't make any progress against the current.

The goldeneye was one of the few ducks and wading birds around the entrance to the loch; a small number of widgeon were swimming just offshore and the tideline was being worked by gulls, oystercatchers and redshanks but, for the time of year, we were surprised at how few wildfowl were around.  Perhaps they've been driven further south by the recent cold weather.

We took full advantage of the miles of open sands and an almost total absence of other humans to stretch our legs and, as my mother would put it, "blow away the cobwebs", finding little of interest except....

....a serpent brittle star left stranded by the falling tide - we popped him back into the water where he quickly recovered.

As we walked back to the car a buzzard wheeled above us, its plaintive cry loud above another bird call - a skylark has either overwintered here or has made an exceptionally early return.

We stopped by Loch Fleet on our drive home in the hope of seeing more in the way of birds but the mudflats were strangely devoid of large numbers, although a few....

....curlews, redshanks, shelduck and widgeon were feeding out on the mud - but, again, in disappointingly small numbers.

Gone Fishin' - 3

I suppose the peak of my fishing career - if such it can be called - came during the two years we were in Jamaica. Friends introduced me to beachcasting off Palisadoes, the spit that runs along the front of Kingston harbour. In its surf one could, in theory, catch a wide range of fine fish but in practice even catching tiddlers proved hard work. For a start, the best time to fish was through the dawn and, since the peninsula was home to a varied bunch of Rastafarians, it wasn't considered particularly safe.

This didn't prevent me from getting up in the dark and, alone or with a friend, setting off for the beach. I had some success - this is a snook - but the biggest catch, a small shark, came off the hook just as I was hauling it through the breakers into the welcoming arms of a couple of Rastas.

The Rastafarians never really bothered me, and I used to enjoy the silence of a dawn rising over the still waters of the Caribbean Sea.

The happiest days along Palisadoes were during the weeks that our friends Tony and Hilary Hizzard visited us, when Tony and I would spend many hours thrashing the waters for fish. When he left, Tony bought me....

....a beautiful reel which I kept for many years - it's seen here with a jack fish.

Nothing, however, prepared me for the excitement of deep sea gamefishing, an opportunity which arose when we started going on holiday to Blue Mahoe. There I accompanied Richard and Horace on long expeditions into the Caribbean which, sadly, never produced the huge fighting fish - the marlin, tuna, sailfish and sharks - which were promised. Despite this, I shall never forget the scream of a reel as a 100lb wahoo took the lure. There's an earlier blog about fishing at Blue Mahoe here.

Snowdrop Propagation

We found the first snowdrops of the year on January 25th along a path close to Dunrobin Castle, after which they disappeared under the recent snow to....

....re-emerge, as if nothing untoward had happened, around 11th February when this picture was taken. Since then, and despite more snow and temperatures as low as -8C, we've been finding them in cheerful clumps all over the place but almost exclusively close to dwellings.

Snowdrops are a non-native species so have been introduced to this area. The usual method of propagating them is to divide the bulbs so....

....how does one explain these ones - just visible at bottom left - which we found today on our first walk for some time up the lane towards Golspie Tower? They are several hundred yards from the nearest dwelling suggesting that, unless some passing motorist threw a snowdrop bulb out of the car window, they were propagated in another way.

The beginnings of an answer came from these snowdrops - again at bottom left - seen today growing close to one of the paths through Golspie Glen, where we were suddenly aware that....

.... several bees were working at them. That bees are out in mid-February is explained by the warm weather which has followed the snow, and by the location, a nearby house having half-a-dozen hives in the garden.

A quick bit of research reveals that snowdrops can be pollinated and then produce pods of seeds which can be harvested and planted.  That pollination is going on is proved by the pollen on the bee's legs. If the seeds are food for some of our local bird species, this might explain the snowdrops along the Golspie Tower lane.