Geese in the Thousands

Each morning thousands of geese fly north in long, wavering skeins, calling as they pass high over the village, and each evening they return. This happens every year, for a few weeks, and then, as winter bites, the numbers hugely reduce, presumably as most of them move further south to avoid the worst of the winter.

However - and we saw this at the same time last year - sometimes the daily migration stops short, with the geese, landing carriages down, settle into the fields just at the back of the village. This happened today as we walked up the narrow road to Golspie Tower and we were able....

....to approach quite close. They were feeding in a field which had been down to barley and were joined in the feast by masses of gulls, rather fewer crows and some starlings. The geese were a mixture of two species, greylags with their distinctive orange beaks, and pink-footed with darker heads and.... pink feet.

We must have done something to alert them for suddenly the whole lot were in the air, a cacophony of calls as they rose, until they had gained enough height to....

....circle round and land in some more distant fields.

Coastal Damage

Recent forecasts for today were for a continued domination by an easterly airstream with rain and high winds but today has turned out quite different: a light wind - easterly - and occasional showers and sunny intervals, but this good cheer was rapidly depressed by....

....the scenes along our usual walk from Golspie Burn to Dunrobin Castle and beyond, where the sea had, during the night, broken over the storm beach to pile....

....tons of stones over the track. Talking to locals, they hadn't seen anything like this in thirty years.

The waves had even had the temerity to break through the sea wall which protects the castle grounds and run right up to knock upon the castle gate.

The consequences of this weather for the wildlife is increasingly dire. This was the only living cormorant I could find along the beach - there were plenty of dead ones - and the pathetic corpses of cormorants and razorbills were joined by....

....no less than five dead seal pups, probably from a seal colony a few miles north of Golspie.

The coast to the south of Golspie has been even harder hit. Parts of the golf course have been flooded by the sea, leading to the closure of the course, the go-kart track is flooded as is the static caravan park and its house.

Everyone I talk to is saying how bad the situation is, and that next time the sea might well cut the A9. Perhaps then the government will be forced to carry through the coastal protection works which have been discussed and discussed for a good few years, with no action taken.

Stuck in a Rut

The weather here is stuck in a deep and rather dirty rut, with the wind somewhere between NE and SE, gusting to gale force, a fair amount of rain - hence the busy Golspie Burn - and temperatures which hover around 10C. Not only is this continuing for a few days but the longer-term forecast into November is for more unsettled, grey weather. Joy, joy joy!

The trees in the local forestry have taken a beating, with both deciduous and coniferous suffering, all of which is good news for one group....

....the fungi.

We first started to notice how rich in fungi this area is during the winter of 21/22. I think it was an exceptional year but it was made more exciting by just about all the fungi we found being 'new'. 22/23 seemed much less prolific but this season is looking better. Not that we are finding much that is 'new' but this puffball may be, simply because it's growing on dead wood while....

....most, like these dusky puffballs, grow on grass, often well out in the open.

We've seen this rather dull but delicate fungus before but it's taken me time to identify it - I think it's Mycena inclinata, the clustered bonnet, again growing on dead wood.

However miserable the weather, there's always something looking at the bright side. Hats off to this gorse bush which has decided to skip winter and celebrate the arrival of spring.

Fishermen

The easterly wind persists, stronger today than yesterday, bringing in an even heavier sea along the Golspie shoreline. It's rotten weather for....

....the local creel fishermen who can't get out to lift their pots but are losing them instead. Other fishermen are having an even more torrid time, there being....

....at least four dead cormorants along the shore near their low-tide roost, the rest being either along the high-tide mark - we did wonder whether these are the same two we saw on Thursday - or....

....taking shelter in the barley field at the back of the beach.

The storm is being cruel to the divers as well, with the bodies of several razorbills, all small, tangled in the kelp. The only birds that seem to be rather enjoying the conditions are....

....the gulls, which are playing their version of 'dare' as they pick up food from the breaking waves.

The Late Martin

Last weekend, as we were walking along the coast path, I spotted a bird swooping and diving in the strong gusts of Storm Babet and said to Mrs MW that, from the way it was flying, it just might have been a swallow - but, surely, it was far too late in the year for them still to be here.

I now realise that it might just as likely have been a house martin, for today we found this sad ball of feathers by the side of one of the many paths that criss-cross the links at Littleferry.

When one thinks of the incredible migration the swifts, swallows and martins follow each year one tends to think of the high mortality which occurs as they try to cross the Sahara. I have heard of travellers in that great desert coming across the desiccated corpses of these birds blowing around in an eddy in the downwind side of a dune.

One doesn't think of those which, possibly like this one, decide to leave the leaving of this country a bit late, and then encounter the challenge of a Babet.

More of a Blow

We seem to be stuck with grey clouds and a continuing strong easterly for the rest of the week and beyond. It's not as fierce today - though it's forecast to be much more energetic tomorrow - but the waves are....

....much larger, breaking right across the sea wall below Dunrobin Castle and across the track where....

....one of the trees blown down over the weekend, blocking the coastal track from Inverness to Wick, the ancient equivalent of the A9, has already been cleared by the Estate.

I was looking for yesterday's sick cormorant and found a corpse close to where we saw it but this may not be it as....

....there were two cormorants sheltering behind a creel and very unwilling to move as I approached, much like yesterday, while others....

....immediately took to the sea where,  despite the waves, they commenced fishing.

So it's pretty dismal weather here but perhaps we should learn from a rhododendron in the castle grounds which has decided that this is absolutely the right time....

.... to burst into flower.

A Bit of a Blow

The weather has swung back again to a strong easterly bearing horizontal, wet drizzle, nothing spectacular - the wind gusting to 30mph perhaps - just unpleasant. Not unpleasant enough, however, to stop us taking our daily constitutional along the coast where the waves....

....were washing in old tyres along with the weed. One thing that has been good about the local beaches is that they are generally rubbish-free and to see these here as well as at Littleferry on Sunday suggests that someone is dumping them offshore.

Along with the tyres we found a crippled cormorant, unable to fly and only capable of fluttering a short distance away when we approached to within a couple of metres. What we found touching was that....

....another cormorant was quite determined to stick with the injured one.

Otherwise, the coast was blown clear of most wildlife, just a few gulls, the inevitable crows, three curlews, some pipits, and the flock of a hundred or so rock doves which, if last winter is typical, will stay with us well into next year.

Littleferry Aftermath

This was the scene at Littleferry at ten this morning - in huge contrast to what we've experienced from the weather in the last few days. The temperature last night dropped to 1C, so the grass on the links had a rime of frost which burned off quickly as soon as the sun touched it, and the wind died away completely.

But the peace of this scene was in sharp contrast to the beach where....

....the sea had removed vast quantities of its sand, the high tides during Babet eating in to the dunes at the top of the beach and leaving....

....masses of dead sea life - starfish, urchins, bivalves - which, one assumes, used to have happy homes in the kelp and other weeds that now lie strewn across the beach. Along with them we found....

....seven sad corpses, all razorbills, a species which seems to have taken the place of the suffering guillemots last winter.

Further along the beach towards Golspie the extent and ferocity of the recent seas was evident in the great piles of weed that were heaped upon the sands, much to the delight of the local gulls.

Aftermath

We were out in the wind and rain yesterday morning for our daily constitutional but it wasn't very pleasant, there was little to see, and taking pictures was nigh-on impossible. I'm a bit past the need to hunt the spectacular, far preferring to observe....

....the less spectacular aftermath of events like storms. Even then, while it's sad to see a good tree down, I'm more interested in....

....the less immediately obvious, like the way the leaves on trees and shrubs which were exposed to Babet's easterly, salt-laden blast have been stripped off or burnt.  This was most obvious in....

....this old apple tree in Dunrobin Castle's grounds where one side of the tree is severely wind-scorched and has dropped almost all its apples. Even hardy. bushes like the sea buckthorn have suffered.

Yesterday's storm waves have been replaced by much calmer conditions under bright blue skies and a warm sun, enabling....

....the beach residents to return and forage along a shore which has lost almost all its sand - which isn't good news for waders like the oystercatchers.

However, in places the waves still built into a good-sized surf, attracting two surfers to the area just north of the mouth of the Golspie Burn.

Winter's First Storm

At the moment we're hosting Storm Babet, the first real blow of the season and one which is obviously enjoying itself so much here that it's in no hurry to move on. My memory of storms on Ardnamurchan - and in our 21 years there we saw some rather spectacular ones - is that they didn't last more than a day while Babet is with us for three.  This seems to be part of a trend, that weather systems are slow-moving and often sit on us for far longer than they used to.

We lost the internet last night but not, mercifully, the power, but any problems we have pale against what the good people of places like Angus, to the south of us, are enduring. The wind speeds here, while gusting well over gale force in exposed places, weren't so extreme that they prevented me from taking....

....a gentle wander through Dunrobin Woods. Little damage was evident - the worst was this tree which had fallen to block a path, and there were plenty of small, rotten branches scattered around - but it was a little concerning to note that....

....so many of the leaves which had been ripped from the trees were still green, meaning the trees would not be benefitting from reabsorbing the goodness they hold.

As I ended my walk along the path that clings to the top of Golspie glen the sun made an appearance, as if peeping quickly from behind the clouds to make sure we were all right. We are, but I feel for those whom Babet has really hammered.