An Apology

It's coming in to the fungal time of year when, unless it's something rather garish like this fly agaric, a fungus is quite likely to be buried or otherwise camouflaged in fallen leaves so, as was necessary with....

....this rather pretty little group, a certain amount of 'gardening' has to happen before a photo can be taken which displays the fungus at its best. The trouble is that, in doing this, there's a risk of damaging or, as happened here, even uprooting one of the fruiting bodies.

When this happened I found myself apologising, out loud, to the fungus. At first I thought myself an idiot for doing this, and wondered what someone would have thought if they'd overheard me, but then I remembered that, although a fungus may not be a sentient being able to hear and understand my words, it is an object of both beauty and sublime complexity and the apology was no more than a deserved recognition of this.

Flies....

On today's glorious autumn morning I set off to walk along the beach to the south of Golspie where the sea has recently, very generously, returned most of the sand it took away some weeks ago. The walk started badly, having to cross boulders and rocks covered with....

....millions of small, black flies, most of which were also setting off in the same direction as me, forming a narrow jet stream of massed insects which flowed along just below the rocks at the top of the beach. In fact, I found it was fine to sit on a rock in the path of the hoard because most simply diverted round me, with only a few that were obviously not paying attention hitting me.

It seems likely that they're Fucellia maritima, one of the kelp flies, a species which is quite common along British beaches.

They continued to pass for most of the walk then, quite suddenly, they stopped.

It was just as well that the flies were there to provide some interest as the beach was otherwise almost totally deserted of wildlife. In the half-hour walk south I saw three oystercatchers, two redshanks and a curlew, none of which allowed me close enough for a good photo - look very closely at the one above and you might be able to spot the oystercatcher - and on the return leg I saw not a single wader.

A few small groups of eider were paddling about offshore, accompanied by gulls which, I assume, were trying to muscle in on any shellfish the ducks might bring to the surface, with a few cormorants further out.

This beach and its adjacent sea seem to be becoming more and more deserted of wildlife. I didn't even find a dead crab washed up along the tideline - a post from a year ago reports our finding a skate washed up. Where, for example, were the sanderlings which should have been running up and down the beach in front of the waves? Where were the birds that should have been feasting on the flies - the only ones I saw were two rooks, who were having a problem catching such small prey in their heavy bills.

Compare today's sightings with this post of September 29th 2020.

Small Bird News

It's an important time of year for our garden in that we'd like to make sure it has a good selection of small birds fit and ready to stay with us and give us amusement through the coming winter. On the house sparrow front we appear to have little to worry about as there are hoards of them, swooping down as soon as any food is put out to hoover it all up, but we know from grim experience that their numbers decline frighteningly fast between the hammer of the local sparrowhawk and the anvil of bitter weather.

The chaffinches seemed to disappear from the garden for several months but they're back in good numbers, and are one of the species which has learned to enjoy niger. We've a sack of the stuff in the utility room which we - vainly - put out in the hope of attracting more unusual species like goldfinches and siskins but now the chaffinches, sparrows and even some of the tits are eating it. It's obviously an acquired taste.

This chaffinch was one of the first birds onto a new feeder, a small bowl placed on a brick on the sill right in front of the kitchen sink. The coal tits, encouraged by some sunflower seeds, were - as always - first on to it with the blue tits next and then this chap following pretty quickly, but then....

....everything went down hill because the sparrows must have been watching what was going on and muscled in on the show.

Like the chaffinches, we suddenly have several great tits in the garden, bullying the blue tits off the peanut feeders and taking no nonsense from the sparrows. It's good to see them but it would be nice to have more of the unusual birds visit us. About our most exciting visitors have been a pair of collared doves, a very smart song thrush, and....

....this pair of wood pigeons. In East Anglia the wood pigeons went around in gigantic flocks fed, I suppose, by the big arable fields, but here they behave as normal wood pigeons, so we most often see them in or near.... the woods.

The Hoey Annex

This picture dates back to 1957 when my father had just been promoted to general manager of the African Mercantile and the company rented a house for us to live in while the manager's house at the end of Cliff Avenue was refurbished. This resulted in a memorable summer holiday for my brother and me as the Hoey House fronted onto an almost deserted white-sand beach beyond which was a lagoon ideal for swimming and snorkelling.

Although his promotion meant that he was less involved in the shipping side of the company, my father still invited the captains off 'his' ships, particularly those he knew well, to spend time ashore with us as a break from the heavy responsibilities these men shouldered during the weeks they were at sea. Occasionally a captain would be invited to spend the night with us and, at first, the Hoey house seemed ideal for this as, at the end of the main bungalow (at right in the picture), there was a two-storey 'annex' which the captain had to himself.

To the left of the annex can be seen the sea, not fifty metres away, and there were glorious views across the lagoon from the upstairs bedrooms. It should have been blissfully peaceful for the captains but when some came across to join us for breakfast the next morning they had to admit that they hadn't been able to sleep. The reason: if the tide was high during the night the captain would have woken to the sound of the surf pounding the beach, and the horrible fear that his ship was about to hit a reef.

Farlary in Transition

We walked around the Farlary croft yesterday, meeting not another soul while finding it in the midst of its transition from summer to autumn, so the place was still green with the deciduous trees holding their leaves but chilly in the wind.

The last of the dragonflies, almost exclusively black darters, were few and far between and only on the wing in the brief sunny intervals. This is an unusually all-black male - most have some yellow patches - while....

....this is a female. We were surprised to see them: elsewhere the dragonflies seem to have finished for the year.

Autumn is showing itself in the fungi which, at Farlary at least, look like being every bit as spectacular as last year, so there were plenty of different species to see as well as wide variation within a single species: these are all....

....fly agaric, this one being a good example of the orange colouration while....

....this one would have been perfect for an elf to sit on.

As always, the biggest problem, for people like me who worry about such things, is identifying the species. I don't know what this is called but....

....as we approached the smaller of the two lochans it was in such numbers along the grassy paths that we had to take care not to tread on it.

Last Years

This is one of the last photographs of my father, taken in 1987, at Fambridge Road in Maldon, about a year before he died. He's over eighty but still well-turned out - my mother saw to that - though I can see his standards have slipped as he now has a beard - he used to tease me about mine, referring to it as my 'beaver' - something he only allowed as my mother found it difficult to shave him.

I see so much in him that is now me. He works his hands as I now do. His hair, like mine, is thin and receded. His cheeks have fallen in but his eyebrows are still dark and bushy. However, there's a vacancy in his look, as if he isn't really there but, perhaps, on a ship in Mombasa harbour, in the captain's day-room asking him if there's anything he can do for him, signing papers and then, if the time of day allows, accepting a beer, or two.

It's not how I want to remember him whereas....

....this is. The picture was taken on the SS Vaal, a fast, modern Union Castle passenger ship which plied between Southampton and Cape Town. It's 1969 and he and my mother are on their way to visit us in Rhodesia. He's impeccably turned-out, he has good food and a glass of wine in front of him, and he has that mischievous look on his face which is a sure sign that he's thoroughly enjoying both the company and the conversation.

Or perhaps his mind has drifted even further back, to....

....a warm day in Zanzibar with the trade winds blowing, some time in the late 1930s, when my mother took this rather blurred picture of him. Those must have been some of the happiest days of his life, living on an exotic island, playing football, with a job as a ships' agent which he loved, and deeply smitten by a dark-haired Scottish girl.

So.... perhaps I shouldn't so dislike that top picture. It is, after all, the picture of an old man who has lived a full life, is respected and loved, and has seen the world. As he said himself, one midday over a pint at The Blue Boar, "life owes me nothing."

Birds Along the Beach

On a still, grey morning, with the sun struggling to break through high cloud, I walked the coast path towards Dunrobin Castle, finding....

....the cormorant colony on its favourite rocks from which, inevitably and steadily, they were being evicted by the rising tide.

Along the tideline the redshanks were busy in the piles of seaweed washed up over the last few weeks but found themselves in unequal competition with....

....what must have been most of Golspie's chattering jackdaw population - we'd noticed, and have been enjoying their absence from the garden. There must have been something very special in the weed as, whenever they were disturbed, mostly by a passing dog, they simply....

....took off - noisily - circled out to sea and then came back to land on a different stretch of weed.

Meanwhile, high above, in further evidence of the changing seasons, the pink-footed geese were settling in to the pattern of their winter's daily migration, north in the morning and back south again for the overnight roost. At a much lower level small birds, ranging from flocks of twenty or more down to isolated pairs, were on the move, all headed south, following the swallows, of which there are now only occasional remnants left. The only birds I could identify were in a large flock which had settled briefly in an oak tree, and they gave me a surprise: they were chaffinches.

The Mole

Moles seem to do quite well in this area: there's plenty of evidence of their excavations, for example, along the track that passes below Dunrobin Castle. However, what we noticed both here and on Ardnamurchan is that these workings can be widely separated from the next lot of workings.

This suggests that moles travel long distances and, to do this, they must move above ground. Each set of burrows is the home of just one mole, and since mothers turf their young out as soon as they are a few weeks old, in late summer, it may well be that it is these young ones who travel to found new territories.

This idea was supported the other day when, walking along a road near here, we came across a mole on the surface which, when disturbed, made no attempt to burrow but found shelter....

....in the bottom of a stone wall. We were told that there were no other mole workings anywhere in the area so, presumably, this one had arrived to rectify the situation.

We left it to its travels in the hope that it would move on: the house behind the stone wall boasts some rather fine lawns which might tempt the mole.

Barringtonia asiatica

Finding this picture on the internet finally brought an end to a search which I have been pursuing intermittently these last few years. It arose from the memories I have of breakfasts when I was growing up in East Africa, when one of the servants would place a frangipani flower floating in a dish of water in the middle of the table - except at one house, the Hoey House, where we spent the glorious summer holiday of 1957. There, an even more exotic flower appeared on the table, picked from a tree in the garden which, we were told, was very uncommon in East Africa.

I remember it as being called a 'moonflower' for, like the frangipani, it flowers at night, but this must have been a local name as searches for it produced nothing. It's actually Barringtonia asiatica (fish poison tree, putat, sea poison tree, or box fruit tree), a tree native to mangrove habitats from islands of the Indian Ocean in the west to tropical Asia and the islands of the western Pacific. The fruit is about 9 cm long, egg- or lantern-shaped, green at first than turning brown when ripe. Importantly, it floats and can survive in the sea for long distances and for periods of up to 2 years. So perhaps, by some fluke, a seed was washed up on the beach below the Hoey House and then planted beside the annex building where it grew into a tree.

The flowers appear on a long spike from the centre of a leaf group and are formed of four white petals cupping a profusion of white filaments tipped with pink. Like the frangipani, the flowers produce a wonderful scent which attracts bats and moths to pollinate it. Strangely, I don't remember the tips as being pink but as a rich yellow.

So a small mystery is solved. As always, I'm not very sure that anything profound in life has been achieved by identifying the plant: it just seems.... tidier.

Image courtesy Wikipedia.

Two Minutes

To pay our respects we sat for a few minutes looking out to the Scottish hills, with the sky grey above, the air absolutely still, and the only sound the occasional cry of a bird out on the loch.

The Fungus Season has Started.... Late

We walked up to the Backies croft to buy some of their gorgeous big, brown eggs this morning but although the chickens looked healthy and were foraging as widely as always - there's a hen at bottom left in this picture - there weren't any eggs in the cupboard. This has been going on for some weeks now and we'd assumed it was because the hens were moulting but we're now wondering if too many other people have discovered these eggs.

The walk was a long one, just under five miles, but worth it for the fungi we found. This is one of two puffballs 'blooming' in the forestry - the dusky puffball - while....

....this was part of a group of honey fungi and....

....this may be an orange birch bolete - it was growing at the edge of a small silver birch wood.

The fungi we're finding are very much the same as those we discovered with such excitement last year. It's noticeable, however, that this year's are 'flowering' much later and in far smaller numbers. This may be because we had a fairly dry August and early September so, with the rain we've had recently, things may yet catch up.

The Turtle

I keep retrieving the old photo albums from my father's Arab chest and browsing through them, sometimes finding pictures of events I had completely forgotten about - as on this page, in an album which my mother made for either my brother or me to take back to school in England, presumably to remind us of the places which were constantly in our minds.

The boat in the picture is an ngalowa, the small, elegant local fishing boat of Africa's east coast. As a boy, when I saw one returning to the beach from a fishing trip, I was drawn to it like a magnet: perhaps this was my Norfolk fisherman genes asserting themselves. 

Most of the fishermen, particularly those going out during the day, offloaded a catch of relatively small fish but occasionally something much bigger came ashore. By any standards....

....this turtle was an exceptional catch. The ngalowa it's wedged into is larger than average, suggesting more than one man went out in it - and they would need every man they had to haul it aboard without turning the boat over.

I remember the day well, not so much for the turtle - I did feel very sorry for it - but for the bloody butchering that followed after they had dragged it out onto the sands.

Harvest

With the weather we're having, getting in the harvest is likely to be more chancy in this part of the world so it was good to see the barley being reaped in late afternoon sunshine in the Dairy Park. A local who stood with us watching - the tractor was being driven by his nephew, who rents the field off the Sutherland Estate - told us that, until last year, this extensive field was never put down to an arable crop. We've noticed that other fields have seen similar changes: large parts of the farm at Golspie Tower, once pasture, are this year down to oats. In today's worrisome world, one imagines that farmers have been urged to increase their cereal production.

The crop in the Dairy Field was barley, perhaps destined to become the national drink. 

Our walk along the front towards Dunrobin Castle usually offers plenty of interest but yesterday's produced little except a few terns fishing just off the beach and this large, hairy brown caterpillar which, rather tentatively, I would identify as the caterpillar of the fox moth.

Frangipani

This flower brings with it many memories from my days in East Africa. Frangipanis grew in the gardens of most of the houses we lived in, planted partly for the delicate beauty of their waxy flowers but also because they produce a rich scent during the night, so it is associated with evenings spent on the veranda or parties on the beach.

One vivid memory is of breakfasts, for when we sat down in the morning a bowl of water stood in the centre of the table with frangipani flowers floating in it, except at the Hoey house at Nyali where an even more exotic flower, also from a tree in the garden, took their place - sadly, I don't know the type of the flower except that we called it a 'moonflower'.

Frangipanis formed low trees which were ideal for climbing and easy to sit in. We also climbed them to find lizards' nest in their hollow dead branches, from which we stole the eggs to keep in cotton wool in a matchbox until they hatched out. I also remember that, if we wanted to find a chameleon, they seemed to like frangipani trees.

My mother loved the frangipani. In her 'Life' she writes of a Lilimama she attended - the welcoming home of the head of the house by the women - given in honour of the Sultan of Zanzibar's wife. "We were given drinks of lemonade and samosas, and as we sat in the garden with fairy lights around the trees and the strong scent of frangipani, the Lilimama was performed by a young woman who sang and danced for us. We were, of course, in full evening dress, and it is an evening of scent and sound and people I will never forget."

Perhaps my parents' great friend Commander John Hall knew of my mother's particular love for frangipanis for he slightly skewed the view in the picture he painted for them from the upper balcony of our last house in Mombasa so it included the end of the grove of frangipanis that ran down the side of the house - they're visible in full bloom at left.

Although I associate the frangipani with East Africa it is a native of South and Central America though its origins may have been in the Caribbean. It's a good example of a plant whose spread around the world by humans has given many people immense happiness.