At The Swimming Club

This photo of me was taken in the late September of 1954. I'm on the beach at the Mombasa Swimming Club, which we'd very likely reached by cycling down to Mombasa's Old Port and hiring a water taxi across the harbour to the club.

The snap was probably taken by my mother on her Box Brownie. By her standards it's a good composition - at least I'm central in the frame. My father took far better pictures.

However, it's also a slightly odd picture because it doesn't include my brother Richard, which suggests he wasn't there. This, again, suggests that he had gone back to school at the local primary, and my mother had taken me to the club because my summer holiday in Mombasa was nearing it's end and, in the next few days, I would be heading up to Nairobi to catch the BOAC flight back to prep school in England.  This is supported by my expression, not the expression of a happy nine-year old.

I had good reason to be unhappy. I would next see my home in Mombasa in ten month's time. I would spend the other two holidays with various aunts and uncles in England. Over the next few months I would cry, a lot. I well remember one air stewardess stopping in the isle beside me as our 'plane taxied out to take off from Nairobi and telling me, in a very firm tone, to "stop blubbing." I did, and thereafter struggled to confine my misery to the hours I lay curled up in chilly English beds.

I have no idea what damage, if that's the right word, was done to children like my brother and I by being 'sent away' to school as we were. I knew a few people who preferred being at school in England to life in East Africa, but I thought they were very peculiar indeed. I spent the rest of my life remembering Mombasa and its climate and beaches and sand castles.

A Busy Loch Fleet

Loch Fleet was busy this morning with geese, ducks, waders and gulls exploiting the rising tide. 

The majority of birds were geese, the large flocks of pink-footed that have been here for a couple of weeks or so. At present they're roosting on the loch at night and flying north for the daylight hours to feeding grounds the other side of Dunrobin Castle.

With them, in almost as large numbers, were common gulls, probably incomers which spend the summer in breeding grounds across Western Europe.

Mixed in with them were far smaller numbers of widgeon, oystercatchers, curlews, and mallard.

It was a heartening sight: we've not seen the loch this crowded in a long time.

Silence

Given the chance, I'll happily spend time at Roe Corner, often just sitting, quietly, listening. It's a good spot because there are some logs to sit on from from which I have views into three environments - down the farmer's field, into the estate forestry to the left, and into the relatively recently planted mixed woodland behind me. I've seen wildlife here too - roe deer, red squirrels, a large variety of birds, and insects, particularly butterflies, the place being a favourite of speckled woods.

However, what I most like about sitting at Roe Corner is that, while I may watch the wildlife, it's one of the few places where I can also listen and, if I'm very lucky, actually hear that elusive thing called silence.

I have to be patient, though, for there are many layers of sound at Roe Corner. Closest are the sounds of woodland and wildlife, and behind them the noises from the nearby houses - mowers, building work, children calling. Behind them again lies a cacophony of noises along the A9, one of Scotland's busy trunk roads, while beyond them there are distant sounds, like the railway and the gunnery on the RAF range on the other side of the firth. But, every now and then, and usually very briefly, all are quiet, and I have silence.

It was one of the things I loved about Ardnamurchan that, so often, last thing at night, I could walk out onto the front terrace of our house overlooking the Sound of Mull, and hear.... nothing.

We modern humans don't appreciate silence enough. We don't actively seek out places where we can listen to silence. We don't value the therapy of silence, the peace it can bring, the opportunity for quiet introspection. It's a tragedy because, surely, we cannot hope to understand ourselves and our place in this increasingly frenetic world unless we we have time to ourselves, uninterrupted by noise. A time where there is only us, and silence.

A Contented Rabbit

This is a picture of a very contented rabbit stretched out on a sandy bed soaking up the early morning sun. What's surprising is that it's chosen to relax on....

....the building site next door to us. It may be that it knows that this is one place where the local dogs can't reach it, and it has discovered that the builders don't arrive until 7.30.

The rabbits here have had a hard time in the recent past with myxomatosis but there are now plenty of them around, which is good - as long as they stay out of our garden.

Sun Worshippers

Suddenly, with the barley harvested and the nights drawing in, it's summer again, with the sun blazing down out of an almost cloudless sky, temperatures soaring towards 15C, and a light wind, so I took myself for a morning walk northwards along the coast path which, follow it far enough, will take you to John o' Groats. I made it as far as the bench which overlooks a small bay, and sat there for a good half hour or so, watching the gannets dive for fish and letting the sun warm my face.

At home the misembryanthemums, which we planted far too late in the season, were out in a blaze of raucous colour. I love them, particularly for their habit of only deigning to open their flowers when the sun is out.

Another of the sun-worshippers are the butterflies. Although our garden is only six months old it has excelled in drawing in such butterflies as are on the wing. Today, once again, the only species to enjoy the michaelmas daisies, verbena and buddleia were the peacocks - three of them in the garden - and....

....the red admirals - four of them. All the other species seem to have given up on the summer of '24 and gone into hibernation.

A Ship at Dawn

This is sunrise this morning seen from the veranda of our house, with the sun now rising much further into the south so, very soon, we'll see it rise out of the sea; and, in the evening, we'll see it set across the flat land to the southwest of us, towards Littleferry. As it is, it's movement south is making both mornings and evenings draw in.

I saw her lights last night, off Loch Fleet, what looked like a bulk carrier at anchor. I didn't expect to see her this morning as there was no need for her to be sheltering against inclement weather, but her silhouette is visible in the this picture. The Marine Traffic website tells us that she's the Baltica Hav, a small general cargo ship built in 1984 and sailing under the flag of Antigua and Barbuda. She was out of Kirkcaldy and bound for Buckie - I suppose that her size means she can get in to relatively small ports - and was due there yesterday, so something has caused her to pause her voyage in the waters off Golspie.

Fungal Promise

It looks as if this season might be a good one for those of us who are fascinated by so many aspects of things fungal. In some cases it's the delicate beauty of these creatures, or the appropriateness of the name they've been given - this one is, I think, a snowy waxcap - while for others it's....

....the thought that, if only I knew a little more, the fungus whose beauty I've enjoyed on my walk could also be a highlight on the evening's dinner plate.

This year, I have promised myself, yet again, I am NOT going to spend too much time worrying about identifications. This one is quite interesting and beautiful in itself without the need for a label around its neck.

Even those which are what one might classify as bog-standard fungi have their own interest: this was one of many of its species scattered along the sides of a woodland track, so one wondered what it was about the track that they so liked.

One thing we have noticed is that this year's fungi are under sustained attack, be it by some other microscopic fungus, as one would expect of a fungus like.... 

....the big one featured in this earlier post, here, which is very definitely entering into old age, or....

....by the local slugs and snails, which have eaten more fungi than we seen in previous years -  their slime trails are often visible all around their victims. This fungus might have been a rather pretty fly agaric, of which there are disappointingly few so far this year.

Eider

Well over a hundred eider were paddling around at the entrance to Loch Fleet last Monday in groups varying in numbers from half-a-dozen up to fifty or so. Most of them....

....appeared to be males but they were of several generations, the fully adult ones, which are over three years old, having the very characteristic pale green around their necks. To reach maturity, the drakes go through eight moults, the proportion of white feathers becoming greater each time, though this is complicated by their having an 'eclipse plumage' during the non-breeding season when the white areas largely become a blackish brown.

The groups were processing gently around the loch entrance each accompanied by....

....a few gulls. We've noticed this before and can only assume that the gulls harass them for the food - mostly mussels - which the ducks bring to the surface, though we've never actually seen this happen.

Parenting

Oystercatchers take parenting very seriously. Time and again at this season of year we've seen a mum or dad closely followed by one or two juveniles - these two were with two others, presumably the other parent and another young one - working their way through the barnacle- and seaweed-covered rocks along the shore, the young one following the parent with close attention.

In the mating season the parents defend a territory, locally a section of shore, at the back of which they build their nest and lay their eggs. By autumn we see them either along the coast like this or forming quite large flocks which gather on shingle and sand banks at places like Littleferry - which, if they're serious at parenting, shows the other, much less serious side of their character for, when they aren't tutoring junior, these are noisy, sociable birds.

As with so many of our shore birds, the oystercatchers' numbers are falling, by over 20% in the last twenty-five years, so they are now on the conservation status 'amber' list. I just cannot imagine a shoreline like this one along the Sutherland coast without these birds but, unless something drastic happens, the oystercatcher may join the other ten out of twenty-six British sea birds which are now on the 'red' list of endangered species.

Chiffchaff

I was walking down a forest track this morning when I was stopped by the call of a chiffchaff. I associate calling chiffchaffs, a small warbler, with spring, when they arrive from North Africa to breed here, so I did not expect to hear it calling so lustily on a cold September day - yes, we've had our two-day ration of late summer, the temperature outside at the moment being 12C, with a chill wind blowing, and a sky which is a dismal, grey overcast!

So, to check it was a chiffchaff - there was little hope of seeing it in the thick forestry - I deployed the wonderful Merlin Bird ID app which told me that....

....not only was there a chiffchaff calling but also a firecrest.

I've only photographed a firecrest once, and that wasn't a great success, so I stood, listening to bird calls and trying to work out which was the firecrest, without any luck. However, in that time I enjoyed being thoroughly scolded by a wren, and being talked at by the very persistent robin which the app had found.

All this made me realise that, with a long winter coming up, I really do need to learn my bird songs. That way, a walk through these very dense woods would become so much more interesting.

'Summer' At Last

We're being given a taste of the summer we didn't have this year, with cloudless skies, light winds and temperatures warm enough to bring all the insects out. Of the butterflies, the species in largest numbers is still the peacock, with four in the garden this morning, this one enjoying one of our three verbenas but....

....by far the most popular plants are the michaelmas daisies, of which, again, we have three. This is the favourite plant of....

....the lone red admiral despite it being given a hard time by the buzzing mass of....

....insects - bees and hover flies in particular. I don't think I've every seen such a crowded plant, which may be why....

....the speckled wood - an unexpected visitor - preferred to feed on the marigolds.

Although it's good to see some butterflies their numbers continue to be depressingly low. We've done our best to encourage them by planting verbena, michaelmas daisies, buddleia, lupins and caryopteris, and by preserving some of the weeds which are so important in their life cycles, such as the nettles on which the peacock's caterpillars feed, but there are too many other things making their lives difficult, particularly habitat loss and pesticides. At least this year's Big Butterfly Count has highlighted the problem by reporting the lowest numbers on record and declaring a 'Butterfly Emergency'.

Jellyfish

This summer there seems to have been much less variety in the local wildlife than we've seen in previous years: a good example of this is the jellyfish.

On our walk at Littleferry on Monday we came across this lion's mane stranded on the previous night's high-tide line, and realised we'd hardly seen a jellyfish all year. A couple of years ago, it wouldn't have been unusual to have seen fifty or more individuals scattered across the sands at low tide, belonging to two or three of the five species we've seen here.

It may be that my illness, during the many weeks of which I didn't get out as much as usual, may explain some of this, but I have the feeling that we would, nevertheless, have expected to see more jellyfish.

Anyway, Golspie could capitalise on this by advertising its beaches as almost jellyfish-free.

The Wild

When we walk the paths through the forestry or across the open links or wherever humans have allowed Nature some freedom we're consciously on the lookout for something exciting. We've had the good fortune to see a number of the more hidden larger animals - red squirrels, roe deer - but there are others which remain elusive. For example, we know there are pine martens in the forestry but, other than one momentary sighting by Mrs MW and some good, clear prints in the snow, we've yet to see one. It's rather the same with badgers: we've found where they've dug for wasps nests but we've never been able to watch one.

Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like if our wilder places were home to more dangerous beasts, and a walk through the woods became as nerve-tingling as....

....this wander through a Canadian forest, where the local bears seemed to have left an unusually large number of their calling cards; or....

....as frightening as this walk through the Tanzanian wilderness, where the danger was so real that a man with a rifle had to accompany us. 

So sometimes I walk the local paths and imagine what it would be like if there were some very dangerous beasts lurking in the thickets or lying in wait in the bracken. It wouldn't stop me walking, and it would certainly make me much more sharply aware of my surrounding, but I would be very fearful of meeting something really nasty. Perhaps it would be good for me, but perhaps, inevitably, what I would want would be a rifle slung across my shoulder. And if everyone did that, we'd soon clear the place of anything dangerous.

Red Squirrel

 

Part of our walk to the village shops is along what we call Squirrel Alley, a woodland path which runs between the back gardens of some houses (right) and the Sutherland Estate forestry (to the left). It's an ideal place to see the red squirrels which were reintroduced here about four years ago and their descendants, but we haven't seen one in months, until this morning when....

....this squirrel, which had been feeding at one of the feeders put out by the garden owners, decided to cross the 'alley' via the branches above us, giving us....

....plenty of time to watch and to take some photographs.

The squirrels were reintroduced both here and into the forestry above Big Barns to the north of Golspie, and seem to have done well, particularly as they are the most northerly of Scotland's red squirrel populations. Some have been seen close to Dunrobin Castle, which means they have managed to cross the busy A9 road.

A New Testament

After finding the green book of African game the other day I've been enjoying a gentle wander through our bookshelves to see what else has been hiding there, and came across this little book of the New Testament. It was given....

....to Beatrice May Mitchell, Mrs MW's mother, by her auntie Millie on February 22nd, 1933, her sixteenth birthday.

The reference on the fly leaf to St John's gospel is....

....to this text.

In my experience, most old bibles have small mementoes hidden amongst their pages, and this is no exception, though the sentiment on this little card doesn't read so well today.

Winter Butterflies

It's like winter today - air temperature 8C, a heavy dew, reports of snow settling on the lower bens of Lochaber, and a chill northwesterly blowing, but at least the sun is occasionally out and the promised rain has held off, so we took our usual walk down through the forestry to the village. I had stopped at Roe Corner in the hope of seeing a deer, and even sat down on a log to enjoy the sun, when a movement....

....caught my eye. It was a speckled wood, a bit tatty around the edges, but quite happy to fly in these damp, cold circumstances. However, what surprised me was that it was joined by several others all of which flew up....

....into the branches of the trees, settling there....

....in the sunshine, rather like the monarchs do in Mexico after their long migration south.

So, it appears that winter butterflies are evolving in Golspie to cope with the sunless summers, and the speckled woods are leading the way.

If you don't believe me, all this was witnessed by a small red bird which watched everything from a perch amid the elder berries.

Esvagt Alba

From our sitting room, looking out over the neighbouring rooftops and away across the Moray Firth, she's just a slight mark upon the horizon, yet this is a rare and exciting enough event for me to reach for my camera, the miracle machine which....

....enables me to see her much more clearly and realise that we've met her before.

The Marine Traffic website confirms that this is the offshore support vessel Esvagt Alba - more details about her from a previous post in November 2023, here.

The few ships we see these days are all as distant as this, most coming and going from the oil and cruise port facilities at Invergordon and the Cromarty Firth. Time was we had a far better view of passing ships when we lived right on the Sound of Mull and had....

....all sorts of ships parading close before us.