Happy Birthday, Mum!

My mother was born on 28th February 1913 when her mother, with Mum's older sister Christian, was staying with her mother in Newick, Sussex so, had my mother survived, she would have been 110 today.

It's not clear from my mother's writings why the family was in Newick, for my grandfather was working in Karachi at the time, where Christian had been born, and travelled to the UK to see my mother christened in the family's home territory of Stirling. On their return to the Far East grandfather was posted to Rangoon, in Burma, where my mother spent her early years. This return trip must have been after the war started in 1914 as their ship was escorted by naval ships in the Atlantic.

My mother is the dark girl in the centre of this picture, taken in Burma, with Christian on the left and Noel in my grandmother's arms. My mother used to joke that her dark skin was an inheritance from the Spaniards who were wrecked on the Caithness coast of Scotland where the Wilson family originated.

My mother's experiences in Burma gave her an urge to travel, which is why she seized the offer of a post working for the British administration in Zanzibar, where she met my father. Their peripatetic life - they lived in at least seven different houses in their years on the East African coast - probably goes some way to explaining my brother's and my wanderings.

So, happy birthday, Mum, and thank you for your part in making me the person I am.

Grey Day at Littleferry

After a day of wall-to-wall sunshine yesterday we were back to more normal weather as we drove to Littleferry this morning to enjoy an almost deserted beach and a long walk at low tide. There was little of note in the way of birds along the shore - a few redshanks, about half as many oystercatchers, a handful of cormorants, some gulls - probably more of these than of all the rest put together - a lone widgeon and....

....small groups of eider diving for mussels: these are immature males.

Sadly, the threat of avian flu raised its head again: this guillemot was obviously sick as it allowed us to approach to within ten metres without reacting, and elsewhere along the beach we came across....

....these rather bloody remains of a pink-footed goose. There's nothing to prove that either of these deaths are flu-related but I take it as significant that guillemots and pink-footed geese are the species which have suffered the most.

Here's something a little more cheerful if mysterious, the tracks of a deer running down the beach before disappearing into sand smoothed by the sea. We've seen this at Littleferry before, suggesting that it's not uncommon for deer to wade out and then attempt to swim south across the mouth of Loch Fleet: I only hope that the beast reached the other shore safely as the currents of a falling tide here are strong.

Long Bay Beach

Breakfast was always late at the little hotel on Long Bay beach, partly because everything runs late in Jamaican time, partly because the hotel's excellent little seafood restaurant worked long into the night. It wouldn't have mattered except we would be woken betimes by a small girl who was hungry but also wanted to be out in the bright clear morning sunshine upon the pristine beach that ran to right and left in front of the hotel. So her mother fed her the snacks we always brought against this eventuality and I would spend a happy if hungry hour or so with her building an elaborate sand castle which, we both knew, would be smoothed back into the beach by the next rising tide.

It is like so many things these days: I look at these pictures and feel the yearning to be back in those moments, then shake my head and look at them again, so grateful that fate once allowed us such happiness, such contentment in such a beautiful, peaceful place.

Crossbill!

I do like to set off on my morning walk with an objective in mind, and today's was to see a crossbill. This is a good time of year for spotting them as they're already paired up and nesting so they're at their most active and most visible high in the coniferous trees. We've seen them before where the track up from Golspie Tower into Beinn Bhraggie woodland crosses Queen's Drive so I walked up there in a mixture of bright sun and sudden, cold rain showers.

The males tend to occupy the topmost branches of coniferous trees so this might have been one, though it turned out to be a coal tit. That said, the crossbills are usually in the thicker branches so when....

....I saw this bird I managed to fire off five pictures which show, without any doubt....

....that the bird was a crossbill, a female judging by the greenishness of its breast feathers.

At the time there were several birds calling, one definitely a blue tit, but one of the calls was a fairly distinctive a-tweet-a-tweet-a-tweet. This doesn't sound anything like the recordings of a crossbill on the internet but one of the problems is that this bird may have been a crossbill, a Scottish crossbill or even, possibly, a parrot crossbill.

The photos were taken at the extreme range of my camera so they're not the best, but at least here I have a picture of a crossbill eating the seeds of a pine cone.

So.... an objective set and achieved. Very satisfying!

Benches

We woke to a cold morning with a skim of ice across the bird baths and geese flying high, northwards, probably pink-footed on their way to their daily feeding fields; too early, despite the recent warmer weather, for a serious migration north.

The morning walk was our customary one, along the track between Golspie and Dunrobin Castle, watching the usual waders now back along the shore after recovering from Storm Otto, with a brief and rather chilly stop to sit on the bench and enjoy the view across an incoming tide, remembering....

....another bench with a view, this one at the end of Ormsaigbeg with its panorama across Kilchoan Bay to Ben Hiant and the entrance to Loch Sunart; a bench perhaps a little too excitingly sited as it was frequently blown over by the westerly gales.

It wasn't until I reached a certain age that I realised how much I enjoy a well-sited bench, somewhere with a view to enjoy and, ideally, an occasional traffic of people passing with whom to exchange views on the weather. Perhaps there should be a special tax on all pensions, say 0.01p in the pound, to ensure a plentiful supply.

Fungi Galore!

Between this track and Dunrobin Castle's walled garden (right) there are some substantial lengths of ancient and very rotten deciduous trees, obviously cut down many years ago and left ever since....

....during which time they've rotted to form some perfect places for fungi to grow. The other day I identified at least six different fungi, this at a time when there are hardly any fungi growing elsewhere. These included several bracket fungi such as the one growing all over the log above and....

....this one which might, but might not be turkeytail, Trametes versicolor.

This is a jelly fungus which looks very similar to the one we found the other day - see post here. I identified that as jelly ear fungus, Auricularia auricula-judae, partly because it was growing on elder while this one was definitely NOT on elder.

In my usual ignorance I would identify this as the oyster mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus, the only one of is kind on the dozen or so logs there.

To add to the interest, this jelly-like mass about 30mm across was sitting very proudly all by itself on top of one of the most rotten of all the logs. It looks as if it may be the crystal brain fungus Exidia nucleata.

An Early Spring

The weather may swing madly between gale and calm but the temperatures remain consistently high for this far north at this time of year. The response of the local birdlife is to assume that spring is here so....

....the yellowhammer males are in full mating finery down by the burn and....

....the dipper has been joined by a mate: we now see at last one of them by the footbridge almost every time we cross it. However, in this world of miserable news, the most joyous moments come from....

....the three male song thrushes which are singing their hearts out between the burn and Dunrobin Castle.

And the oystercatchers are back from wherever Storm Otto blew them, a big flock, with a few redshanks and curlews mixed in, performing aerial manoeuvres before settling along the high-tide line at the mouth of the burn.

It may seem as if spring is imminent but we need to be aware that winter these days has a habit of running late, some of the worst weather coming in March. Not that this bothers the snowdrops near the castle; and we even have the first daffodil out.

The High Places

I'm just so thankful that, one day many years ago, we had the courage to make a decision to leave the secure place in which we had lived for many years, where we had long-standing friends, where we felt we had begun to 'belong', and to move somewhere which was very different, a place which was more uncertain, more risky, more lonely. One of the rewards we sought required us to take yet more risks by striking out upon lonely tracks, leaving them....

....to climb higher and higher into a wilderness where we were utterly alone except for the sky and the winds and the wildlife, lonely, beautiful places where, sometimes, if you cared to look....

....families like ours had once lived but had left many years ago to find new adventures in far-away places.

Often we walked and walked higher and higher, until the world we knew and had learned to love lay far below us so we sat, watching it, well aware of how fortunate we were but also knowing that, like those families before us, it must end, but that we would carry away precious memories to treasure for the remainder of our days.

Storm Otto: the Aftereffects

We walked along the beach at Littleferry this morning for over an hour without seeing any birds except for....

....a few gulls harassing the seals which were feeding where, with a fast-falling tide, Loch Fleet was emptying through its narrow entrance into the sea. We concluded that, as Storm Otto built yesterday, the ducks, divers and waders had all fled to find shelter inland.

Only as we walked back did some of the usual inhabitants start to reappear, including a small flock of....

....red-breasted merganser, small groups of eider....

....some shelduck....

....and small numbers of widgeon. There were some conspicuous absentees. For example, there are always, but always oystercatchers at Littleferry - but not today; and there are usually redshanks, these only starting to reappear as we were leaving. And we spotted half-a-dozen curlew, not along the shores of the loch but in a farmer's field.

Storm Otto

The worst of Storm Otto crossed Scotland in the early hours of this morning, waking us at five and bringing heavy rain and, with the sun coming out occasionally, rainbows. The northeastern part of Scotland seemed to fare worst with gusts at Achavandra, just to the south of us, hitting 52mph and the highest readings of 87.5 at Rogart and a cracking 98 at Invergordon lifeboat station - these figures coming from local enthusiasts with weather stations.

The storm brought the usual problems of ferry cancellations and school and bridge closures - the Dornoch Bridge to the south of us was closed as is our local high school - but happily the most serious problems in our garden was the loss of several bird feeders: they'll appear again in due course.

Birds on a Beach

Dead calm today, hardly a breath of breeze to mar the polished mirror of the sea, and mid-tide on a falling tide, both perfect for the waders that frequent the beach which is five minutes from our front door. I am so fortunate for, without moving from the spot on the coast path where this picture was taken, I was able to photograph....

....one of three oystercatchers, the first redshank I've seen for some time....

....a curlew, the only bird which seemed at all bothered by my proximity....

....a black-headed gull in its winter plumage and, on the rocks to my left,.... 

....a juvenile cormorant stretching its wings to dry them.

I say they seem unbothered by me but, when I started to think about it, it wasn't just me. While I was taking these picture three people, all with dogs, came by. I don't think one of them noticed the birds. So perhaps the birds now know this, that if they stay still, the danger will pass; and, if they have the rare misfortune to encounter an unusually energetic dog, only then do they need to fly.

Alone

Here is another short story which I started by creating a situation and then allowing the tale to evolve on the computer screen. The story was okay but I didn't particularly like the ending and I would have done something to change it except a short story competition was coming up and, being short of short short stories - in this case, under 2,000 words - I sent 'Alone' off, and it won.

Once a story has won a competition it can't usually be entered for other competitions, so this one has sat for some time in the winners' enclosure in my computer's memory doing nothing. It's a waste as the competition I sent it off to isn't a particularly prestigious one and it might have done well in something much better.

The short story 'Alone' is available for download here. I hope you enjoy it.

Territories

It was so warm this morning that I was able to sit on the bench on the village side of Dunrobin Castle for a good half-hour, just watching the sea and the birds and exchanging comments about the weather with the occasional passer-by, every one of them accompanied by a dog or two - and thinking that the beach is like a no-man's land, the area between the wildlife's territory out to sea and on the rocks and our territory on the land.

Only the occasional oystercatcher ventured into no-man's land, walking along the sandy beach to probe for shellfish and worms, accepting that, every now and then, a human with a cockapoo or some such would come along the beach and chase them away, at which point they would retreat to the rocky point in the left distance where....

....the resident birds feel safe as no human, or dog, in their right mind would scramble across the wickedly slippery, seaweed-covered rocks to reach them. So today 'their' territory was occupied by the usual dozen-or-so cormorants, two grey herons, four black backed gulls and a handful of common gulls, a changeable population of oystercatchers and curlews, and a small flock of eider, some of them preening themselves out on the rocks. There was a conspicuous absentee, the redshanks, which seem to have completely disappeared.

I suppose that is how it is now with our wildlife. We have taken possession of most of the available space, the better space, and altered it to our needs, while they have to make do with what's left, either the places we can't reach or the places for which we have no use.

Brora Beach

Brora, a small village just to the north of us, is a ten minute drive away along the A9, a place we only visit when we have to fill up with petrol - one of the few services which Golspie doesn't offer. It's at the mouth of the Brora river, with a small harbour, a Co-op and several touristy shops, two petrol stations - why couldn't Golspie have one of them? - and several hotels. It's a picturesque place whose main asset, as far as we are concerned, is its....

....beach, miles of stretch-your-legs sand running away to the north behind which rise dunes which, today, were being populated by the year's first skylarks, males staking out a territory before the females arrive. Any area of dunes in this part of the world is, of course, taken up with a golf course, and Brora is no exception.

Wildlife was scarce on the beach today, a few common gulls, groups of two or three oystercatchers, a crow or two, and....

....a small flock of waders, perhaps sandpipers, which were contentedly sunbathing on this rock until chased off it by one of the many dogs being exercised along the beach. In summer Brora beach is special as it boasts a colony of Arctic terns and, when we were last there, flocks of sanderlings and ringed plovers.