Gorse

One of the tracks we follow from our end of the village climbs through land which was burnt in a large fire which swept through a section of coniferous plantation in 2018. Much of this area is now blanketed with gorse, though pines are striving to outgrow it and willow, beech, broom and heathers are all competing for space.

When I followed this track yesterday it was obvious that....

....I wasn't the first along it, these slots being so crisp that the deer that made them must have passed by hours before.

The spiders had also been busy, their gossamer traps materialised by the previous night's dew.

The gorse-dominated area isn't ideal for wildlife, though it was along here that we saw one of this summer's adders. On yesterday's walk, with autumn moving in, the main wildlife pleasure came from two small bird species....

....the wrens, which seemed quite happy to come out and show themselves from gorse vantage points instead of skulking around in the undergrowth, and....

....the robins which, while usually found on high vantage points, seemed to be vying with the wrens for the best spots on the gorse - this youngster had found his display post on a pile of logs.

I spent much of my time sitting on a boulder looking out across the view and listening to....

....the noisy skeins of greylag geese passing over on their way from Loch Fleet to feeding grounds in farmers' fields to the north of us.

Butterflies

We're a couple of days off the end of September and the butterflies are giving us seemingly endless pleasure. I went for a walk this morning and saw not one, despite the warm sunshine and light breeze, but on returning to our back garden I counted six red admirals - there have been that number or more in the garden almost throughout the month - and....

....a small white, one of three whites that have been busy over the last couple of weeks laying eggs on our much-loved and now very chewed broccoli.

To my surprise, a speckled wood, a rare visitor, came in to the garden and spent some time on a slab of concrete warming up, while....

....a single peacock put in an appearance: we haven't seen one of this species in several weeks.

Then, to make the day very special, we spotted....

....a painted lady - again, a species which we haven't seen for some time and had assumed was well on its way back to Africa.

So I think we can sit back and feel quite pleased with ourselves for the garden we have created since moving in to our new house in January of last year, for it has also attracted a pleasing variety of other insects - I haven't even started to photograph the mass of bees, bumblebees, hover flies, wasps and other groups which have moved in with us. Only one has been a disappointment, the....

....dragon- and damselflies. This common darter was resting in the middle of the track not two hundred metres from the house this morning, but we haven't seen one actually in the garden. There's probably a good reason: the one thing that hasn't thrived in this warm, dry summer has been our pond, which has been dry for months.

Littleferry Again

We drove out to Littleferry again this morning tempted by a wonderfully still start to the day, reaching the loch as the tide turned and....

....began to flood back across the miles of empty sands and into Loch Fleet. Today's count of humans enjoying the beach was, including us, five adults and one small child but the count of birds....

....ran into the hundreds. In this picture, oystercatchers in the foreground are exploiting the seaweed growing on the rocks while....

....masses of eider are patrolling offshore, in waters calm because the light swell coming in from the North Sea was breaking across the sand bars that run parallel to the coast.

Mixed in with these birds were a few curlews, various gulls - black-headed particularly in evidence - four guillemots, and a few of the juvenile gannets that were here in such numbers on Friday. Looking out across the massed eider, on the other side of the channel that was funnelling the rising waters into Loch Fleet, we could see groups of cormorants, many of them holding out their wings to dry.

King of the Garden

I came through to the kitchen to make the early morning tea but was diverted by the sight of a bird, sitting on a post not ten foot outside the window, staring intently across the garden. It was absolutely motionless except, every minute or so, it slowly swivelled its head to concentrate on a different view.

I liked its lack of hurry, its supreme confidence that it dominated this garden, that it ruled this realm and that all the other birds rightly cowered before its imperial gaze.

It knew I was watching - it must have done for, by the time it finally decided, in a very leisurely way, that it ought to be moving on, it almost had the camera lens in its right ear.

Thank you, sparrowhawk, for giving my day a wonderful start.

Gannets and Guillimots

We walked at Littleferry this morning on a beautiful day only slightly marred by a steady and cool southeaster, to find the main beach as crowded with humans as ever. So we sat for some time at the top of the beach, relaxing in the warmth of the sunshine, and watched the main show....

....which featured masses of gannets - I would guess at upward of a hundred spread along a kilometre of coast - diving for fish just off the bar running parallel to and about fifty metres off the beach. This is the largest flock of gannets I have ever seen, here or elsewhere

The photos are at extreme range for my camera but it was evident from them that most of the birds were juveniles, which was confirmed when we walked back towards....

....the entrance to Loch Fleet where a strong incoming tide was drawing the bait fish into the channel, and the gannets after them, so we were able to see some of the birds....

....up close.

We were also please to find three guillemots working the channel. We haven't seen guillemots here in months - they seem locally to have been the species most hit by the bird flu epidemic - so these were a very welcome sight.

Nuts!

I was enjoying this morning's gentle breakfast washing up, but probably spending more time looking out of the window than scrubbing the dishes, when I spotted some branches moving in a small yellow-green leaved tree on the other side of the road. Sure enough the disturbance was....

....the squirrel - but this was the first time we had actually seen him in a tree.

He was teetering along some of the small beaches to reach for something....

...which he picked and then stuffed into his mouth....

....before descending from the tree and running across the road to our neighbouring house.

We crossed the road and checked: the tree is a hazel, one of three planted along the road, all of which are laden with nuts, so he probably stuffed his mouth so full that, in crossing the road....

....he dropped some.

A Welcome Visitor

Our kitchen sink, which is where I spend many happy hours each day doing the washing up, looks across the turning point at the end of our cul-de-sac to trees which the original developers of the estate planted some years ago. I've made use of them by hanging up a couple of peanut feeders so I can watch the birds, particularly the blue, great and coal tits, as I work.

But on Saturday I noticed a newcomer, a rather smart, dark-tailed red squirrel which looked very at home running along the pavement towards where the bird feeders were hanging.

It disappeared into the trees to emerge a few minutes later and....

....set off down the road - but, is it my imagination or does it have something in his mouth?

Twice it stopped and, I'm fairly sure, buried something in the gravel at the back of the pavement.

I think the squirrel may have found a way of accessing the birds' feeders and half-inching some of their nuts to bury for its use this winter.

So I've made a squirrel feeder, filled it full of peanuts, and fixed it near the the birds' peanut feeders. Since I did this we've seen the squirrel a couple more times but on each occasion it has run up and down the road doing... well, doing something, but the one thing it has done is to studiously ignore my DIY masterpiece.

Rising Tide

We walked the beach below Dunrobin Castle this morning, the sky covered with a high overcast but promising a fine day. The rising tide was beginning....

....to put pressure for space on the cormorants which like to sit on the rocks just offshore while....

....the grey heron was hunting for its meal in the floating seaweed....

....and the curlew looked for its prey amongst the boulders.

We saw little else in the way of shore birds: a few gulls, including a black-backed gull, and a couple of oystercatchers, but the usual birds we'd like to find at this time of year, particularly redshanks, turnstones and sanderling, were missing.

Red Admirals

Red admirals are currently the most common butterflies in our garden, emerging on the sunny days, or even for short  periods during sunny intervals in the colder, greyer days, to feed on our abundant verbena and michaelmas daisies. So there have been moments when we've seen up to nine red admirals and only a couple of whites and a single tortoiseshell.

The - very smart - red admirals we're seeing at the moment are a brood produced by immigrants from the near continent which arrived in May/June. Their British-born brood goes on feeding until October when, so most websites tell me, they die. However, after recent discoveries of an amazing, long-distance return flight by the painted ladies - see previous blog post here - one wonders whether the red admirals do the same. This would seem logical as otherwise there seems no point in producing this UK brood if it just dies out.

That there is a return migration is hinted at by the Butterfly Conservation website: "Red admiral numbers build up during the summer, often peaking in early autumn. At this stage, there is a return migration southward to warmer parts of Europe." However, there is no detail, though the site does suggest that some red admirals are now over-wintering in the warmer parts southern England.

Perhaps further research is being carried out at present, in the same way as it has been for the painted lady,  that will clarify what happens, this made possible by new ways of tracking relatively small insects travelling over remarkably long distances.

Backies Fungi

One of the best places for interesting fungi has always been the track that runs up through mixed woodland in the neighbouring crofting community of Backies. The trail is well-maintained by some local mountain bike enthusiasts though, in our many walks there, we're seen few people on bikes using it.

Much of the woodland is spruce and fir plantation but some....

....is deciduous, including this area of ancient oak and beech trees.

After the recent wetter and cooler weather we were expecting there to be a cornucopia of fungi as there has been in previous years but there wasn't: along the whole walk we only found four species but happily two of them....

....both in dark, spruce woodland, were....

....spectacular. I'm fairly certain this is one of the honey fungus species, and my memory tells me that we've seen it in exactly the same place in years gone by.

The fungus had the most spectacular 'ring' around its 'stalk'.

A second fungus was also one I remember from earlier walks in these woods. I'm fairly certain it's oakbug milkcap, and it has....

....a quite interesting texture to its cap.

The trail meanders uphill until it reaches one of the estate tracks, where the forestry falls back and....

...on a lovely morning like today's, there are views across the Golspie Glen to Beinn Bhraggie and the sea.