Loch Fleet Wildlife Count

On our walk this morning, along the eastern shore of Loch Fleet and then along the tidal channel that leads to the sea, we making a rough count of all the wildlife on or along the edges of its waters. In the loch's main basin (above) the largest number of any one species was of common gulls, of which there were about a hundred standing bunched together on an emerging sand bar.

A dozen seals had adopted their banana position on two still hidden sand bars, a grey heron and an oystercatcher were feeding on the shingle banks of the loch, while out on the water we saw two eider and what might have been a goldeneye.

The channel was almost deserted. Three flights of about six eider each flew low across the water toward the sea, a seal came briefly to the surface, a pair of eider swam back and forth, a heron fed on the far side, and we spotted....

....a lone seal pup, also on the far side. This isn't good news as pups like this may have been abandoned by their mothers.

Just off the mouth of Loch Fleet fifty or so eider were feeding close to the seaweed-covered boulder shoreline, accompanied by numerous common gulls. I presume that the gulls interest is in stealing the food that the eider collect by diving to the bottom, though I have never actually seen this happen. Also along the shoreline were half-a-dozen oystercatchers, three curlews, a pair of ringed plovers, and a couple of redshanks.

It's not a particularly spectacular count for a loch which is supposed be rich in wildlife, however many migrants have already left, other birds, like the curlews, are off nesting inland, and some, like the eider and oystercatchers, are beginning to sit on nests along the water's edge.

After Lunch

I've just finished lunch and have been looking out at a garden which, for most of this week, has been battered by a chill northerly airstream which has brought occasional snow and sleet showers to the north-northeast of Scotland. The flowers which bloomed in the encouragement of last week's brief sunshine are looking distinctly jaded and the seeds we planted in foolish optimism have, wisely, decided not to germinate.

At times like this it cheers me to look at photos of warmer places and recall how hot it was at this time of day, and what a pleasure it was after lunch - which would have included a beer or two - to find the deep shade of a veranda and, if possible, a slight draught so I could sit looking out at the view, not doing anything except enjoy the enfolding warmth and allow my mind to wander where it chose.

It's not windless. The jahazi's lateen sail is filled by the southeasterly trade wind so the little boat is batting along and will be off Bagamoyo beach in half-an-hour or less. But the wind caresses rather than cuts; it's a friendly wind, one which stirs the palm fronds of the makuti roof and muffles the never-ending scream of the crickets in the bush land behind the building.

The heat will persist until mid-afternoon, and even then will only ease slowly; and, as slowly, people will emerge and resume their business. This is not a world of air-conditioning but of people simply adapting to the climate. We, in our climate, can only sit and look out at the garden because the central heating is on. The only other way of staying warm is to go outside and find some violent exercise, like digging one of the vegetable beds.

I would dearly love to be back living under the trade winds, adapting to their regime, accepting that less gets done in a day simply because, for much of it, it's too hot. And schooling myself in the art of doing nothing for the hour or so after lunch, nothing except to allow my mind to roam free.

Landing the Catch

This is a painting of my mother's which came to me when she died. It's 11" by 8", oil on what might be but isn't hardboard, and has the artist's signature, which looks like RJ Burt or LJ Burt. I remember it on the wall in several of the houses my parents had but when I asked my mother where it showed, and what boats they were, she didn't know. What she did recall about the picture I wrote on the back, not very legibly in blue biro. It says....

...."Granny remembers this came from Stirling, from Aunt Christian and Uncle Dan. It hung in their dining room. Granny lived there when she came back from Burma in 1920. Given to Granny by Sandy." Aunt Christian and Uncle Dan were sister and brother of Granny's father.

I have no idea why it came to my mother through her brother, Sandy, and I have always assumed it is of a Scottish scene.

The type of boat interests me. It isn't a scaffie, a zulu, a lugger or a fifie, as all of these have pointed sterns and two masts, while this one clearly has a square stern. It also has a very straight-up stem, and has none of the leaner lines of the others. About the closest I can find is a boat called a 'beach punt', which does have a square stern and, as its name suggests, is designed to work off a beach. However, the only example I can find is recorded in Suffolk. Note also that the boat is steered with an oar, not a rudder, and that its single sail is lug-rigged.

Another thing in the picture which intrigues me is the location. It looks like the mouth of a small river which, because it has a bar across which the waves break, also looks none too easy to enter if the sea was rough. Presumably there was a village reasonably close, so where is it?

Finally, this is a detail showing the old lady who has come down the beach to collect the catch. She appears to be dressed in a very Scottish style but... is that a donkey?

Brora Beach

After last week's blissful warmth the weather is doing its best to be beastly, with -2C in the garden last night and sudden, heavy showers of hail, snow and 'snail' - snowy hail - all of which have helped bring to an end an exceptional year for....

....the scarlet elf cup fungi in Dunrobin Woods: these are the only remnants I could find of the 70+ we counted.

The weather encourages us either to take walks in the woods, where there is some protection from the elements, or along open beaches where brisk exercise helps work up some warmth, so today we drove the six miles north to Brora, partly to put some petrol in the car as there is no service station in Golspie.

Brora has a beautiful beach for stretching the legs but it's lacking in interest at this time of year, though things will change in a few weeks when the arctic terns start nesting there. So today we had to be content with....

....views along the beach which reminded me of mirages on a flat Sahara plain and....

....a few moments' excitement when gannets started diving into the sea to be joined by what looked like quite a large pod of dolphins.

Otter at Last!

Towards the end of this morning's walk I was sitting on the bench near Dunrobin Castle checking the birds - gulls, cormorants and one or two rock pigeons - which roost at low tide on the rocky spit below the castle when I noticed a dark bump on one of the rocks beyond the birds which....

....as I stalked closer and closer, turned out to be two otters, not large ones so probably cubs, taking a rest in the sun.

Their peace was disturbed, not by my cautious approach but by the rising tide, when a wave broke across them, so they....

....woke and made their way into the water.

We've been looking for otters ever since we've been in Golspie and our failure to see them is almost a standing joke with some of the people we meet on our walks, several of whom have seen otters recently.

The otters didn't leave immediately, spending a few minutes looking for lunch before disappearing into the rising waves.

A Very Red Aurora Alert

There was plenty of warning that we would have a good aurora last night but when I went out to look at just after ten last night it was snowing. This appears to have been the general experience across Scotland last night - the only photos on the AuroraWatch Flickr site are of an aurora seen through a 'gap between thick clouds'! It's a great shame as I can't recall having ever seen such strong activity.

So it was no surprise to wake this morning to the sound of sleet tapping on the window and a layer of snow on the hills - this is the Duke of Sutherland's statue on Beinn Bhraggie to the west of us, with the snow concentrated on the north slope.

It's also been windy, an Artic blast which may have been the reason why the Olympic Electra was anchored in the Moray Firth this morning. She's an offshore supply ship built in 2011 which sails under the flag of Norway.

After a fairly miserable start the day has cheered up, enough for us to walk along the coast, stopping both to admire the burgeoning wildlife and the breakers which, with a rising tide, these....

....cormorants would shortly need to do.

Farlary's Small Birds

The forestry on Farlary croft yesterday was bursting with small birds, perhaps because the fine weather coincided with the peak of their mating seasons. These pictures were all taken within a few minutes in a small area of the croft's coniferous forestry which was surrounded by either open space or deciduous trees - an ideal environment for small birds.

Identifying them was a challenge and it was a relief when one was easily identified - like this very smart male chaffinch - but too often....

....the birds played difficult-to-see, so ones like this remain unidentified. Even when they were being unco-operative some could be identified by their song, like....

....I knew this was a willow warbler from its glorious cascading call, even though it refused to show its face.

This was a much more helpful willow warbler, which both posed beautifully and sang a little song so there could be no doubt about its identification.

Some were difficult to identify because there are other species very similar. I think this is a redpoll but it might be a linnet; either way, it was great to see it as I haven't seen either species in ages.

Then there were some very old friends, like this coal tit, one in several small flocks of coal tits in the plantations. It's a species which seems to be doing well locally, and is a regular visitor our garden.

It was very frustrating that so many of the birds simply couldn't be identified. For example, this just might be a chiff-chaff, of which there were several calling.

That I didn't manage to identify some of them doesn't really matter. What does is that this croft is home to a such a truly wonderful selection of small birds.

Loch Farlary

With the exceptional weather continuing we drove out to Loch Farlary, parking the car so we could sit overlooking the water, sitting quietly and waiting for the wildlife to come to us. We didn't have long to wait before....

....a lapwing flew over calling with its characteristic pee-wit, pee-wit, followed soon after by a second. We don't see lapwings during the winter so assume they migrate south and return here to breed. In the air above them were skylarks, which seemed as thrilled as we were with the weather.

Scanning the loch with binoculars we found three pairs of geese, two which were clearly greylags and one which may have been pink-footed. One of the pairs was approached by a mallard pair, which were very quickly seen off.

While watching the geese we spotted a herd of red deer beyond the far end of the loch, counting fourteen, a mixture of stags and hinds. It's been some time since we last saw red deer: more and more of the areas where they used to roam free are being fenced - as at Loch Lunndaidh - and planted with trees, mainly conifers.

I do so enjoy just staying in one place and seeing what wildlife comes to me. We could so easily have driven past this spot and seen none of this.

Loch Lunndaidh

It's been months since the last time we walked the track which rises from Drummuie, through the forestry to Loch Lunndaidh so we rectified that this morning, on a day of almost flawless sunshine and a light breeze cool enough to make walking pleasant.

With spring now well on its way, the main thing we were looking for was, as always, this year's first of each species, and we started off well with several....

....dog violets ranging from this colour through to a much darker purple. Then we saw several 'first' birds, including....

....a welcome sighting of the first wheatear of the year, looking exceedingly smart as he flaunted himself on top of a fence post, and....

....a second which, being darker and pinker, was very likely to be a female.

Then we saw....

....both a male stonechat and....

....his slightly dowdier wife, using gorse buses as vantage points. Stonechats are here all winter but we haven't seen any where we usually do, on the tall grass stalks along the coast. 

Finally, we found the first tadpoles in a shallow ditch by the side of the track, their situation looking very precarious as much of the water had evaporated and we have no rain forecast for several days.

Seashells

I keep finding photographs I took many years ago and had forgotten about. This one hasn't any great significance but I do remember taking it, on a beach in Tanzania, when I had decided to see how many different shells I could find quickly on what was, by local standards, a fairly unremarkable beach.

I don't know the names of all the shells but the two at centre bottom are small cowries, the globular ones around them are, I think, olives, the elongate one is a turret, and the two at top left are bivalves of some sort. I can't identify the one at top centre but it's interesting as it has a live hermit crab in it which is trying to escape from the picture.

Then, on my walk the next morning, I thought I would try the same little experiment on....

....a beach just a quarter of an hour's walk from our front door, in this case a shingle beach. I was fortunate that there was no-one else around as I doubt whether I would have grubbed around on my knees looking for shells had there been any witnesses.

This is the sum total of what I found in a ten-minute search. It's a little different from the Tanzanian beach inasfar as with it I had a real choice of shells to photograph. The top two rows, mostly yellow, are common periwinkles, Littorina littorea, the one at bottom left is a grey top shell Gibbula cineraria, and I haven't identified the other three on the bottom.

I don't think I proved or disproved anything with my experiment that I didn't already know - that, for reasons well beyond my ken, tropical shells are so much more varied and so much brighter in colour than those of the North Sea, and one does wonder why. It's the same with so many things - birds and butterflies spring to mind. It's as if our grey climate bleeds the colours out of our wildlife - with a few notable exceptions - leaving us so much the poorer.

Mystery Fish

With the forecast promising bright blue skies, uninterrupted sun, light breezes and temperatures over 15C, we took ourselves to the long beach at Littleferry for a walk, finding virtually nothing along the tide line except weed, mussel and other shells, a few sea potato tests, one bunch of skate eggs and....

....this strange creature - size 9 boot print for scale. At first we thought it might be the tail off a skate but it has....

....a small head to go on the long, otherwise featureless body; and there was obviously nothing there except the skeleton and the skin.

I had no idea what it could be - picture shows a clearer view of the skull - and some time on the internet hasn't helped much, except that, if it isn't an eel, it might be a hagfish.

Any suggestions gratefully received.