Littleferry

For a time it looked as if our only company in this morning's damp and rather grey walk along the beach would be a lone oystercatcher but we then spotted seven birds of a species we haven't seen since the spring....

....long-tailed ducks.

There was a time when the corpses of fishes - particularly rays - were quite common along the beach but they are now a rarity. Today's one find was a small fish, perhaps a bream.

With so little visible along the beach, which is worrying, it cheered us to find the main 'pond' of Loch Fleet busy with birds, including shelduck, mallard, widgeon, oystercatchers, gulls, crows, and an unusually large number of very vocal curlews.

The French Painting

One of the things I inherited from my mother was this painting. I know little about it except for references in the lists she made of all her possessions some years before she died, where she says of it, "French water colour, autumn scene, bought 1937 in King William's Street, London by HH for £4. It originally had guilt frame; reframed in Zanzibar." HH was my mother, Helen Haylett.

In a separate list, which went over much the same ground as the first, but a few years later when she was packing up her flat to move into a home, she wrote, "Picture of Autumn to OHH," OHH being the home, Old Hastings House. That she took it to OHH, rather than one of the many other pictures she had, indicates that it had a very special place in her affections, having been bought at some expense not long before she set off to take up her post in Zanzibar..

It's interesting that she knew it was French. The picture is signed, but this is illegible, so the shop which sold it to her must have told her something about it.

So we are left with the subject of the picture, the man walking towards us carrying something large on his back. It could be the French equivalent of a coracle, though it's a bit small for that. It could be the equivalent of the Highland Scots' creel used, for example, for carrying peats. Or it could be something unique to some rural part of France.

I'm also intrigued by the man's clothing which, surely, should give a clue as the the location in which the picture was painted, and also by whatever the 'stick' is that he's using.

I just wish my mother had written a little more about this painting - which I have always loved; and I would like her to know that it's still in its Zanzibar frame, and is in the safe hands of one of her grand-daughters, who has just had it cleaned.

Brora

Brora is the next village north on the A9, about five miles from Golspie. We drove there this morning to avail ourselves of two services which. our village doesn't offer but Brora does, a recycling plant and a filling station. Both villages used to have many more services which have since disappeared, including the one which we most miss, a bank.

Whenever we visit Brora we take a brisk walk along its miles of open sands, populated today by one other walker, a few seagulls and, on the golf course....

....six oystercatchers feeding on worms.

Although only a light wind was blowing, walking was cold work, the air temperature being slightly below 4C, held there by some thin, high cloud which blocked the sun. This cleared just as we arrived home.

Warthogs

I have a soft spot for warthogs. The must be one of the ugliest animals to grace the great savanna plains of Africa - probably on a par with the hyena - yet I respect the warthog for having survived in an environment where....

....this cat's favourite food is a big, fat pig.

Warthogs, like all pigs, are intelligent. For example, they hang around villages where the inhabitants are moslem, so don't eat pork, and where the warthogs are therefore safer because lions don't like humans.

That said, I still don't understand why warthogs have survived in the battle for existence. They have to feed - they are grazers - so can't hang around moslem villages all day; despite having long legs, they don't stand a chance against the acceleration of a lion; and although they have wicked teeth which act as tusks, which they can use to great effect, these aren't much protection against the teeth and claws of a lion.

Despite so much being stacked against them, they must be doing well because they are so often to be seen in the games parks of places like Tanzania, where these pictures were taken.

My only regret is that, in the three tourist-style visits we made to Tanzanian parks in the early 2000s, we never saw a family of warthogs. They are very good parents, suicidally protective; the children are very obedient; and a family on the trot, all in a line with their tails straight up in the air, is an unforgettably amusing sight.

The Hunters

I had hardly ventured forth into today's damp and chilly morning to walk up into the hills when I was confronted by....

....this newly-planted notice warning that the annual hunt across estate land had begun; and I had hardly passed the notice before....

....the hunters, all French, arrived.

They were very pleasant, and I felt like wishing them luck because, from our experience, at the moment there is very little in the way of game in these hills; there are certainly far fewer rabbits and roe deer.

I don't really object to hunting: how can I when....

....I used to be a keen fisherman - this is me fishing for rainbow trout in the beautiful Pungwe River in Zimbabwe - and I owned a .22 rifle when I lived in Rhodesia. Guns and hunting....

....run in the family - this is my great grandfather who was captain of the Scottish shooting team, and....

....the lady on the left is my mother's aunt Lil, seen here on a tiger shoot in India.

My views on hunting have changed as I've aged. While I might still go fishing if invited, I don't think I would now want to shoot anything, not unless there was very good reason for doing so.

Happily for the wildlife, and very much less so for the French visitors, I heard only one gunshot all morning.

More Geese

This morning we sat and watched as massed skeins of pink-footed geese flew across the skies above the Dornoch Firth, on their way north to the day's feeding grounds. We tried to find some way of estimating how many there were, but were defeated. All we could come up with is that the upper arm of the nearest skein consisted of about 200 geese - and if you look closely in the lower part of the picture - click on the picture to enlarge it - there are masses more, and more continued to pass over after all the geese in this picture had gone.

There is something awe-inspiring when one encounters large numbers of a single species gathered together - and, at times, frightening, as when....

....we encountered a large herd of buffalo in the Selous reserve in Tanzania.

From the way the geese numbers are increasing, I would guess that more and more are still arriving from their summer nesting grounds in Iceland and Greenland, so we may have even more awe-inspiring sights to come.

The Big City

It's not often we go to Inverness, the nearest the Highlands has to 'the big city', but when we do it's because we have to - for example, to attend a hospital appointment; and the place is always a pleasant surprise, not least for the long walks that can be enjoyed through the woodland along the River Ness.

To get there we made use of our senior citizens' 'Saltire' card which entitles us to free travel on the bus to and from Inverness; and the one night we spent there was at one of the city's three Premier Inns, which are always clean, well-maintained and reasonably priced.

However, given a choice between a couple of days in Inverness and being at home, I would take the latter every time, especially if, as happened this morning, on entering the woods for our daily walk we are greeted by a red squirrel and....

....find a fungus which we haven't seen this year. This is, I think, a yellow brain fungus growing on the fungus' favourite host, gorse.

Not that Inverness is without wildlife. On the pavement beside a busy road into the city's Seafield industrial estate we spotted a pied wagtail, a bird we haven't seen here in ages.