The Surfer

It's Thursday, so it's the morning for my usual walk north from the village, crossing the Golspie Burn before following the coast path northwards towards Dunrobin Castle - and what a beautiful morning for a walk, on a perfect autumn day with hardly a breath of wind and the sun finding gaps in the clouds to spotlight the leaf colours in the deciduous trees. However, turn the opposite way and....

....there's a heavy swell coming in from the southeast, big waves with wide, smooth gaps between them lifting to smash against coastal defences which were sorely tried last winter.

Of course, where there is a good set there's bound to be....

....a surfer. He must have been sufficiently pleased with the waves - the tide was rising, with high in another hour's time - to have summoned his friends, as another surfer was arriving as I passed him again, still working the waves, on my way home.

Farlary

We haven't been for a walk on Farlary Croft since September 2023. Normally, we'd be up there two or three times during the summer, always returning home with a camera full of photographs. That the gap has been so big is down to the medical problems with my leg, which is now almost completely healed - so a beautiful morning yesterday found us driving up into the Sutherland hills.

The croft is one of several in the Farlary township but is unique in that the crofter has spent money on developing an extensive network of trails for visitors to follow. There is no entry fee, there's a car park, a number of picnic tables, and miles of carefully-developed paths, yet we find we usually have the walks to ourselves - as we did yesterday. 

That we'd been away for some time was evident in the number of new features - like this lochan, one of three new ones, all a bit bare at the moment - but the one thing the crofter evidently enjoys is his trees - some of which are very unusual species - as can be seen....

....around this little lochan, developed some years ago. We almost always make use of the blue picnic bench as it is in the sun during the mornings, and this is a good site for dragonflies - in their season.

The croft is usually rich with wildlife but this is a time of year when the summer migrant birds have departed, the winter immigrants haven't yet arrived, and the residents are making good use of their absence. So yesterday I took hardly any wildlife pictures except for some of this rather fine fungus.

As we descend from the main network of paths in the upper part of the croft we come down this little glen to where there is a stone bench which, because it is beautifully sheltered and south-facing, is always a warm place to sit and relax.

Our grateful thanks to the crofter for the pleasure access to his croft has given us over recent years.

Summer Again!

I had thought that summer was over, that last Thursday's peacock and red admiral were the last butterflies we would see this year, but the sun came out this morning, the temperature soared to 14C, the bees were busy on the remaining heather flowers....

....a grey wagtail, which should have gone south long ago, was seen hunting insects around the edges of our pond - now refilled after drying out in the summer 'drought' - and.... 

....suddenly the butterflies were out, a single peacock and....

....the lone painted lady who has graced our garden with her presence over the last fortnight.

Loch Fleet Fungi

We walked in the pine plantation along the banks of Loch Fleet yesterday looking for fungi and were not disappointed in their numbers - so this might be a good year for them. However....

....both there are elsewhere they've been variously rotted, broken, chewed up and degraded. Some of the damage looks like the work of slugs and snails but much of it isn't. So even....

....the best specimens are rarely perfect.

I still don't want to try to identify them but can't help it. Some I'm reasonably sure of - like, this is a brittlegill - but others defeat me, like...

....these, relatively undamaged, beauties. We've found them in the same woods before, just in one place, and couldn't identify them then.

This was about the most undamaged one we found, its colour even more rich chestnut than seen in the picture. The underside of the cap and the stalk are the same colour, so it should be easy to identify.

This may be meadow coral fungus. It's very similar to yellow stag horn but it caught my attention because, unlike the others, it was found out in the open grassland of the links.

Manoeuvres in the Moray Firth

This is the Seaway Ventus, a self-propelled jack-up vessel designed to install offshore wind turbines and their foundations, anchored off Brora on Thursday morning.

We rarely see much traffic in the Moray Firth so we were pleased this morning to wake up to....

....a warship off Tarbet Ness. She steamed across the firth towards us then ....

....turned north to pass in front of Golspie before heaving-to off the coast between Golspie and Brora.

She was the Danish command vessel Absalon and she was later joined....

 

....by a second warship, much more distant, which I was able to identify as a Royal Navy ship, HMS Portland, a Duke-class frigate.

A NATO exercise, Steadfast Noon, is due to begin tomorrow. While this is described as a two-week exercise involving, "more than 60 aircraft taking part in training flights over Western Europe," it's quite possible that the two naval ships are also taking part.

Rowans

I walked up this forest track yesterday in search of berries, in particular rowan berries as these are the favourites of the migrant birds from the north which arrive around this time - fieldfare and redwings in particular. It's early for them, but their arrival dates depend on how quickly they exhaust the berry crop in places like Scandinavia where they've spent the summer. Certainly, the crop here....

....is a good one, with many rowans sagging under the weight of their fruit.

Sadly, I didn't see anything feeding on the rowans so concentrated my enjoyment on the flowers growing in the recently-cut verges, one of which....

....is one of my favourites, the beautifully named devil's-bit scabious. Only a few of the summer's blooms are still there, fading as winter approaches, while, to my surprise, some plants....

....are just coming into flower - at this time of year! This is gorse, more and more of it bursting into its yellow blooms as winter approaches.

I walked up the track until I reached the gate in the fence which, at one time, was the boundary between the artificial forestry to the right and the wild, open moor to the left. No longer, as the open land I so loved was planted, mainly with conifer, a couple of years ago, the area fenced, and the red deer we used to watch expelled - or shot - from the new plantation.

I walked too far, but the sun was so warm, the sky blue, the wind light, and the unfolding track beckoned. Time was when I could have carried on up to the cleared clachan of Loch Lunndaidh, but not any more so, very reluctantly but sensibly, I turned back, arriving home exhausted after a two-and-a-half hour walk.

Autumn

The countryside is increasingly painted with the shades of autumn...,

....the barley has been reaped...,

....and the heathers are dying back: the ling is finished but the bell heather (above) still carries some last flowers while the cross-leaved heath looks the healthiest.

There are splashes of bright colour, the leftovers of a summer flowering, like this self-heal, while....

....in the occasional sunny intervals, the butterflies still reappear. This peacock and....

....this red admiral were on the wing last Saturday but, with a piercing wind now in the north and the temperature struggling to reach 10C, I fear these may be the last butterflies of the year.