Migrants

The swallows and martins have gone, all but a few, like the handful of swallows which were working the rabbits' field as we passed it on our morning walk. 

A little further on we heard a chiff-chaff calling, not the full-throated song of early summer but a pale imitation, as if it was hoping to meet up with a fellow-traveller for the long flight south; and on our return, as, again, we passed the rabbits' field, we saw....

....this little bird on the fence, which looks very like one of the warblers.

 I spent some time later in the morning sitting in the sunshine of our back terrace carrying out the arduous task of scanning the skies for swallows and martins - and saw only one.

Low Tide

Littleferry, low tide, 10.27 this morning, the entrance to Loch Fleet, nothing moving in the channel except a single seal.

Offshore, looking south-southeast toward Tarbet Ness lighthouse, a few birds bob around on grey seas under grey skies while, along the beach....

....oystercatchers probe the grey sands for molluscs and worms, ignoring an old tyre washed up on the beach.

At the top of the beach clumps of sea rocket are in flower, their bright yellow pollen attracting the attention of surprisingly large numbers of bees.

Four people and five dogs shared with us the miles of sands exposed by the tide.

In The Garden

Finding a siskin dead on the garden terrace when I went down there this morning wasn't a good start to a morning's gentle gardening. She had flown into one of our windows, this despite decals being stuck to deter just this sort of small tragedy. In a way we feel very guilty as....

....we spend a small fortune on sunflower kernels to attract the siskins into the garden.

As I started pottering around it became very evident that our new king robin was having a great deal of trouble with another robin which was trying to muscle in on his patch. However, when this picture was taken he was making the noise which means, "I don't feel threatened just at the moment". 

We have three wood pigeons which are growing fat on some of the grain that falls from the feeders. They're actually doing us a service as the the larger grain which accumulates on the ground, such as maize, which the small birds can't cope with, might otherwise attract vermin.

By ten o'clock, with the sun out and pushing the temperature over 20C, the garden should have been full of insects but, as usual, it wasn't - a painted lady was sipping the verbena, a white was enjoying our brassica leaves, and a red admiral popped in to say hello. There were also few bees and other insects that would normally be crowding on to the wealth of flowers we've grown for them, though happily one of the bees put in an appearance just as I was taking a photo of the painted lady.

Every year Mrs MW insists on planting outdoor tomatoes and I tell her she's wasting her time. This year I am comprehensively wrong, for we are going to have a good crop, which says something about the uncharacteristically warm and sunny summer we've had.

On the subject of crops, at present we are enjoying the following from our 18-month old garden: courgettes, tomatoes, potatoes, kale, cavolo nero, peas, beetroot and broccoli. In view of this....

....here is one new arrival in the garden we can definitely do without.

Exploiting the Wind

The view in one direction was of man's modern exploitation of the moorland hills of Sutherland, the swoosh, swoosh of the blades of these mechanical giants breaking the deep silence above which, looking in the opposite direction....

....a golden eagle exploited the thermals.

Pictures taken at Farlary on Saturday

An Unusual Fungus

We drove up into the Sutherland hills to the northwest of Golspie on Saturday, to Farlary Croft where the owner has opened part of his land to walkers such as ourselves to wander through a variety of different habitats. The heather is still in flower so the hills were at their best.

One of the sections available is across a part of the croft which is rough grazing for sheep, where the path has been made by digging down through the peat soil to the underlying rocky surface, and it was while we were making our way along this path that we spotted what looked like ripe rowan berries - they're at bottom left of the above picture.

The spot was nowhere near any rowans and a closer look proved that the orange-coloured blobs were small....

....fungi - the largest of these is about 10mm wide.

I can't find anything like this on the internet and have ended up with only one possibility, that they are a variety of....

....orange-peel fungus, above, a fungus which we've found before but growing in gravel by the side of a damp forestry track.

Garden Advice Needed!

Will someone please tell me what's wrong with our garden! We've been developing it since the builder handed over of the house a year and a half ago, and we've planted it - or so we thought - so it would be as insect- and bird-friendly as possible. Just at the moment the insects' food plants include michaelmas daisies, verbena, buddleia, lupins and big white daisies, amongst many others, yet yesterday afternoon, with the temperature at 23C, light winds and bright sunshine, all we could attract in the way of butterflies were....

....one red admiral on the buddleia - we have about nine buddleia of various colours in the garden - and....

....a peacock on the michaelmas daisies - we have three large clumps of them in the garden - a passing white and, joyfully....

....a painted lady, only the second we've seen this year, on the.... gorse!

It was also noticeable that there were few other insect groups on the flowers. In previous houses we've had, the michaelmas daisies have been crowded with bees, hover flies and other insects, but not here.

I've been racking my brain for an explanation. Could it be that our garden, in the middle of a relatively new housing development, is surrounded by an insect desert, so they simply don't come this way? Or is it that this part of Sutherland is experiencing a real insect crisis?

Four Habitats - 2

From the pine plantation 1 we walked out onto Ferry Links 2, an area of grassland on a sandy, calcitic soil. where the first flower we found was...

....a lone but perfectly-formed wild pansy.

Sadly, there were few insects out, and it wasn't until we were about to leave the links that....

....we spotted the first butterflies, four in all, all common blues.

From the links we moved out onto the open beach 3. As is 'normal', we had it entirely ourselves, this on an August Bank Holiday. We remarked that the tide line was devoid of flotsam beyond the elongated piles of seaweed, a few small shells, and numerous bird feathers, mainly from gulls.

At the entrance to Loch Fleet a flock of about fifty eider was bouncing around in the contraflow along the edges of the strong current flowing in to the loch, mostly juveniles.

A large flock of oystercatchers was resting on our side of the channel while, just offshore...

....three terns and a couple of gulls were harassing a diver which had caught something. At the distance, it was difficult to identify the bird but it may have been a juvenile guillemot - which would have been good news as we haven't seen a guillemot in ages.

Retracing our steps through the woods we crossed the road to where there is a view of....

....the inner basin of Loch Fleet 4. This is shallow and tidal, low tide exposing a large area of mudflats mostly exploited by gulls.

Beyond the background of Balblair Wood the heather was still bright on the slopes of Silver Rock (centre) and Beinn Lundaidh (right).

Four Habitats - 1

We walked at Littleferry yesterday on our favourite walk there. It's special because it visits four distinct habitats but, despite this, it's not one we have done for some time. Having parked the car P we followed an overgrown path into Ferry Woods, 1, a largely Scots pine plantation which....

....evidently had a rough time during the recent Storm Floris.

In the middle of this woodland is the now much overgrown.... 

....Loch Unes, home to several species of dragon and damselfly including....

....black darters and....

....what I think were slightly worn emerald damselflies. A hawker was patrolling the lochan but I was unable to picture or identify it.

We also found a grayling, not a common butterfly locally but the second we've had the pleasure of meeting in recent weeks. 

[continued....

Bird News

These birds gave us quite a shock yesterday morning. They were geese, not sure which species, in a neat skein, flying south, one of the many recent indicators of the changing season.

On a happier note, having been absent for some weeks, we saw the first....

....blackbird back in the garden. His was only a fleeting visit as we've not seen one since, but at least it indicates that, having had three pairs feeding in our garden through the nesting season, hopefully they will return to spend the winter with us.

Having had few visits from robins recently, and no robin that we could identify as 'owning' our garden through the summer, we saw this character on the fence yesterday afternoon, a possible pretender to the throne.

Our Resident Wren

Meet our resident wren. It lives in the back garden and is often to be found in the undergrowth under one of the bird feeders. Sometimes it....

....crosses an area of rather exposed paving to spend time exploring behind the flower pots. From there, if it's feeling very adventurous and....

....the door is open, it can get into the small room where we keep all our gardening stuff. I'm not sure what it finds to eat in there but it may be that all it wants to do is expand its territory into an area where none of the other birds dare venture.

A Ship Off Golspie

We woke this morning to find a ship anchored off Golspie. This is a rare occurrence these days so, as someone who has had the good fortune in my time to have lived in two houses where passing ships were common, please excuse my mild excitement.

She is obviously one of the many ships in the North Sea catering for offshore developments but a quick look at the Marine Traffic website revealed that she was the....

....Horizon Prospector, built in 2018 and registered in Panama. Currently, she seems to be operated by Gardline Ltd out of Great Yarmouth and, from her specifications and the inclusion of two laboratories, seems designed for geotechnical surveys.

Usually we most commonly see such ships anchored in the firth if there is a storm coming or if they have mechanical problems. There are no storms in the short-term forecast but the ship is reporting her navigational status as 'restricted manoeuvrability', so perhaps she does have a technical problem. On the other hand, maybe she has restricted manoeuvrability because she is drilling test wells for a huge oilfield which has just been found under Golspie.

Construction Work

This is the view from Roe Corner looking towards Rhives Farm. It doesn't appear much different from a few days ago but, zooming in to the right across the field, there are signs....

....of construction work, and the old wall has been covered by an elongate mound of earth where the farmer has....

....dug a track along the top of the lower field. While the track gives him/her much better access to the two fields, the more distant construction work, we learned from the Highland Council Planning portal, is for a site for thirty caravans, camper vans or tents. This is well away from the path we normally follow so it won't really affect us, except that....

....one or two sections of our regular route down to the village will need a bit of time to recover - this is The Avenue.

Far be it from us to object to or resent development such as this - after all, we've just built a house on what was a farm field - but one can't help feeling a slight pang of sadness when it may affect the wildlife we so enjoy on our walks. And all these things are, I suppose, 'progress'.