High Cloud

Random stretches of high cloud obscuring the rising sun painted the world in shades of orange, yellow and grey this morning. At the mouth of the Golspie Burn only the fat, bread-fed mallards were there to witness it, while along the....

....offshore bars built to protect Golspie's main beach in the days when it was still a fishing port a lone heron....

....and, at a respectful distant, an equally lone cormorant stood guard.

We walked Golspie's south beach for an hour, much of its sand stripped away by the recent easterlies, the only birds a couple of gulls, four oystercatchers, a half-dozen eider and....

....ten long-tailed ducks.

It's the sort of still winter scene to which we now have to adjust ourselves, following a clear night during which the mercury dropped below 2C so we woke to a hard ground frost. That even the gulls seem to have deserted Golspie beaches I cannot explain, except to mention that the local press are warning that bird flu is back in the Moray Firth, the main sufferers being the pink-footed geese and the gull population.