The Despoilment of the Sea Buckthorn

The sea buckthorn bushes along the front near Dunrobin Castle were loaded with a mass of orange berries some three weeks ago but they were....

....stripped bare in just a few days.

This picture gives an idea of the number of berries which should have been available to keep the birds through the winter and, if you look carefully at top right, the possible reason for their sudden disappearance, for the...

....buckthorn was alive with blackbirds, redwings and fieldfares, all migrants from Scandinavia.

Calm at Littleferry

We took advantage of a relatively warm morning - the temperature at 3C - light winds, and some brief bursts of sunshine to drive to Littleferry to walk along....

....a mile or so of sand exposed by the low tide. The usual oystercatchers were there, feeding both along the wave line and amongst the seaweed-covered rocks, some rafts of eider swam offshore, a black-backed gull watched us warily, and a lone cormorant flew unusually fast and low past us along the beach.

When we walked to the end of Littleferry's jetty, the pools at the entrance to Loch Fleet were filling with the rising tide but were bare of wildlife except a seal and a single....

....goldeneye creating circular ripples on the loch's calm surface as it dived to feed.

It is winter, it is a time when the wildlife concentrates on survival, but we do wonder what has happened to some of the other bird life we used to see at this time of year, including the masses of redshanks and the small but busy flocks of sanderling.

At least, as we drove home, we spotted the first geese we've seen in some time, a dozen or so pink-footed enjoying the hospitality of a farmer's field.

Desert Roses

It's cold and grey, and the ground froze overnight after yesterday's snow thawed creating some lovely slicks of ice first thing for the seventy-pluses to slide across. So it's a day for memories of warmer climes and, specifically, of two roses, not your hybrid teas or floribundas but two that are at home in hot, dry desert regions.

The first rose is Adenium obesum. It's native to Africa, the Middle East and Madagascar. It has pretty, shades-of-bright-pink flowers which would grace any garden but what makes it so special is that it grows in arid areas where few garden flowers could hope to survive.

The desert rose is able to exist in such conditions because it's a succulent, with a broad, swollen, base that is partially buried under the ground and which stores moisture for the dry season. This 'caudex' produces twisted, almost leafless, gray-green to brown branches which can be up nine feet tall. 

We found this particular beauty in the Saadani National Park in Tanzania, growing amongst grasses which were dead from want of rain. It provided a wonderful explosion of colour in an otherwise desiccated landscape.

However beautiful it may be, and however happy it made us to find it, it doesn't compare with....

....these spectacular natural crystals of gypsum, also called desert rose, part of a naturally-occurring crystalline structure found within sand dunes in the Sahara desert. The structure from which these pieces came can be....

....very large, witness this specimen from the Tunisian Sahara.

Tunisian crystals courtesy Wikipedia.

And More Snow....

The snow returned in swirling flurries just before eleven last night but later the skies cleared to reveal the stars against a faint aurora. By dawn....

....the leaden clouds had returned and the temperature had fallen well below zero giving us a sharp frost and....

....crunchy walking underfoot.

Such birds as we saw in the woodlands were members of the thrush family - blackbirds, song thrushes, and redwings - along with the resident robins but out in the open we found one small tree....

....festooned with golden jewels - a whole tribe of yellowhammers.

The Snow Returns

The sun was losing ts battle with the snow flurries as we set off on our walk this morning, most of which was through....

....the forestry as this protected us from a biting westerly wind.

The leaves along this path had been disturbed, probably by one of the deer looking for something to eat, which was also what....

....this horse was hoping for as we passed, Mrs MW apologising to it for not bringing it a Christmas treat.

Dunrobin Castle looked forlorn and cold and deserted, holding close the memories of Christmases past when every room would have been filled with light and warmth and laughter. Now, for half the year it's closed and the other half it's a museum commemorating a family which has the dubious honour of being at the forefront of the Clearances.

Season's Greetings

This year's Christmas good wishes features the nativity set which my parents found in the roof of the Upanga Road bungalow in Dar-es-Salaam which they moved into in 1942. As detailed here, the set must be well over 100 years old. The light is provided by a bulb in a green turban shell from Zanzibar which itself must be at least 60 years old.

A Leach's Petrel?

We woke to rain and an easterly wind this morning, the rain clearing by the time we went out to walk but the sea remaining heavy along the shore below Dunrobin, not ideal conditions for looking for shore birds.

The one species which is doing well at the moment is the oystercatcher. Sitting on our favourite bench overlooking the bay we watched a dozen of them feeding on bugs in the seaweed piled at the top of the beach by the high tide, an occupation which required, every now and then....

....a hurried leap into the air when a particularly large wave threatened.

Along the back of the beach we came across this sorry little corpse. It looks a bit like a guillemot but is far smaller - perhaps 6" long - and is obviously an adult. We've found one of these before - see post here - and been unable to identify it, but it could be a Leach's petrel, which is described as the size of a starling.

If it is a Leach's petrel, this is a rare bird along this coast, and is endangered - its UK conservation status is red. It would now be really good to see one alive.

Fungal Disappointment

The early part of last winter must have been exceptionally good for fungi - either that, or this winter, so far, has been unusually poor. In the last few weeks we've seen very few of note and even those we find, like this golden chanterelle, have been decidedly sickly. Maybe that's about to change as, on our woodland walk this morning, we came across....

....the first fungus for some time which was both spectacular and, possibly, new to us. At first glance this looked like witches' butter but it isn't jelly-like and lacks the petal-shaped lobes of that species. Also, witches' butter is common locally on dead gorse branches while this was on a small branch of a hardwood tree. 

Having said it isn't witches' butter I don't know what it is, though there is another very similar yellow fungus called Tremella aurantia which grows on hardwoods.

We then went on to find several more fungi, none of them, sadly, the sort I'm prepared to spend hours identifying. This one, again on hardwood, was tiny - the lowest lobe is about 10mm across, and....

....this rather shapeless mass wasn't much more exciting, or much bigger.

It was, however, good to come across....

....some 'ordinary' gilled fungi growing very prettily on a moss-covered, rotten tree stump.

Winter Sun

With the leaves stripped from the deciduous trees the low sun of a winter morning probes between the trunks to light up areas which, at any other season of year, are in permanent shadow. It's a lovely time to be walking, not least because, despite being so low in the sky, the sun still has a welcome warmth to it.

Such low-angled light also picks out denizens of the forest which probably don't want to be seen, like....

....this roe buck doe which had her young at heel and did her best to steal away without being noticed.

I was in the forestry early this morning so the deer were still around before the other walkers' dogs arrived to disturb them so I saw no less than four - on most walks we're lucky to see one.

Having walked through the forestry I came down to a sea in near flat calm, its surface broken only by a large seal, a couple of goldeneye, and three mallard foraging along the seaweed-line - and it was so warm I was able to sit on our favourite bench for twenty minutes and look out over the sea to where, far out, two fishing boats were working the Moray Firth.

Midwinter

It's been some time since we last visited Littleferry so we drove there today to celebrate the solstice. Almost as soon as we arrived, the sun broke through the clouds and, low as it was, set about warming both our bodies and our hearts.

The tide was just past high, the outer pool at the mouth of Loch Fleet as full as we'd ever seen it, but what struck us was how bereft of wildlife it was. A couple of eider were visible but none of the usual rafts of them at sea off the mouth of the loch.

Over the last few weeks, the prevailing northeast to east wind has enabled to sea to remove the normal, wide beach leaving the waves free to erode the dunes. We've seen erosion like this before along this section of coast but not as severe as this.

At the one point where the sea hadn't quite reached the dunes we found the almost untouched remains of a dolphin which had obviously been there for some time. Otherwise, the beach was as lacking in life as the loch, with only a few gulls and a small flock of passing oystercatchers to interest us.

If the mouth of Loch Fleet was empty when we arrived, by the time we left the exposed shingle bank was crowded with oystercatchers, with a further large flock on the south side of the channel. I would guess at there being around 200 birds altogether but, other than the same small group of eider, not another shore bird was visible. 

As we left the beach we came across this oystercatcher which, rather than take off at our approach, ran away along the sand. Its unusual behaviour was easily explained: it had a broken wing.

On the positive side, although there are now warning notices about bird flu at the car parks we only found one dead bird along the shore.

I Wish....

There are many experiences in my life I would love to reprise. One of them is the sort of African safari we were fortunate enough to be able to afford where we were driven around a national park in a Land Rover or Land Cruiser looking for beauties like this, a Tanzanian giraffe with its gloriously intricate markings, or....

....something a bit more spectacular like this small herd of elephant which, when one looked closely, were rather depressing because the big tuskers were conspicuously missing.

It's always good to see the big game, like these Cape buffalo - though I feel most fortunate to have seen leopard in the wild - but it's every bit as exciting to see more modest animals, like....

....this water buck, from a hide. The animal was little more than ten metres away, and knew I was there and watching him, but allowed it. Breathtaking!

Then there is the safari I loved the most....

....where we walked through the bush with lovely people like these to care for us. The man on the left was our personal guide from the camp, the one on the right a ranger from the park. I have no idea what the latter would have done with that Kalashnikov had we been charged by an angry buffalo as hitting it would not have stopped its charge but would have made it even more angry.

I will never go on another safari. I accept that. I'm just so pleased that I have seen Africa's spectacular animals in the wild, before they are all enclosed in fencing to separate and protect their dwindling populations from the depredations of humankind.

A Drink for the Birds

With the temperatures dropping well below zero overnight and hardly getting above freezing during the day, any standing water is now sold ice so the small birds are desperate for water. Within moments of filling this little tray a cock sparrow was enjoying a drink followed by....

....a quick dip and then, after a few moments' hesitation....

....a very vigorous bath.

A Winter's Day

A sharp frost last night, with the temperature still down at -3.5C at 9am in the back garden, has made walking much easier as long as one watches out for the re-frozen ice, the snow now crunchy underfoot. The sun hardly lifts his head above the North Sea horizon - it's only a week now until the shortest day, which is a cheering thought.

There's been little more snow at lower levels but more at higher. While the back roads are still icy the A9  is clear, though a delivery driver reported deep drifts at Berriedale, just north of Helmsdale, last night, caused by the wind blowing snow from the adjoining fields.

It's good that we're still able to get out for our daily walk, and we are so, so fortunate to have such a variety of scenery to enjoy close at hand.