More 'Firsts'

This morning we set off in cloudy but still conditions, with the occasional irritating splashes of rain, to walk the coast path past Dunrobin Castle, mainly on the lookout for more 'firsts' of the year - and we were richly rewarded for putting up with the rain, starting with....

....the first grey wagtail of the year, seen where it's almost always found, just upstream of the footbridge over the Golspie Burn. Then....

....we were allowed to approach to within ten metres of a martin, possibly a sand martin, which simply sat and watched us unto we were just a little too close for comfort

The next bird of interest was one which should have been abundant through the winter but which conspicuously wasn't: the starling; and today we only had a fleeting glimpse of a flock of four.

Near the starlings we found the first eggs-and-bacon plant of the year, though this one was very much more eggs than bacon, which was a pity as good bacon can be rather fetching.

We don't associate greenfinches with this walk but this handsome bird may have been attracted to the sea wall by the mass of ichneumon wasps on the wing. Greenfinches are usually thought of as mainly eating seeds but apparently they do enjoy an insect meal.

The real icing on the cake of this walk came almost at its end when we spotted a painted lady - surprising since the weather was hardly butterfly weather and no other butterflies were on the wing.

Wet Walking

We continue to be assailed by a miserable north-north-westerly airflow which holds the temperatures below 10C at midday, and also brings sharp wintery showers of hail interspersed with some of the heaviest, though not unwelcome rain we've seen in months - so taking a walk involves donning all the heavy waterproofs of winter, and taking photos is severely restricted. However, on the bright side, when the sun is out the gorse still burns enthusiastically.

I walked out this morning looking for anything new, and almost immediately stumbled across the year's first lesser stitchwort hastening its flowering before it's buried under rampant bracken.

In this weather, the last thing I expected to find was a large caterpillar - albeit a very unhappy caterpillar holding on to a twig of dead gorse. I think, without certainty, that it's the caterpillar of the drinker moth.

One doesn't normally expect to find something of interest in the bottom of a soggy ditch but these are only the second example I've found of a fungus called bog beacon Mitrula paludosa. There were only half a dozen of these tiny fungi....

....this one, the largest, being about 10mm high.

Shortly after I arrived home Mrs MW called me to the window. Tsuro was back on the lawn enjoying a late breakfast of succulent grass. We were mightily relieved to be able to welcome him home.

Missing

We're very worried about Tsuro the rabbit. He hasn't been seen in the garden since this photo was taken two days ago and it was on that day that we first saw....

....this very handsome black cat.

It comes in to our property from the house that's below our back garden but we've not seen it before so don't know who owns it - not that cats can be 'owned' like dogs are.

The cat was paying special attention to the part of the garden, round the pond, which is, or perhaps was Tsuro's patch. We chased it back down the bank to where it belongs several times but it was back again in no time, and we tried strengthening the fence. Then, today, we've not seen it, so fear that it no longer has an interest in coming into the garden.

Oh dear!

Casting Clouts

Folklore dictates that one should "never think to cast a clout until the month of May be out" - a clout being a garment of some sort - on the basis that it's not uncommon for us to suffer some miserable weather in a month in which people are anticipating the start of summer. The proverb is, of course, partly true, but it's also true - in our experience anyway - that May can be beautiful. In fact, if anyone asks us which is the best month in which to visit the Highlands we always say, "May," for there are many days in May when, if you didn't, "cast a clout," you'd boil.

The other thing about Highland weather is that one just has to go out into it, whatever it may be. So, this morning, in the face of gusty winds, hail, snail (snowy hail), rain and a temperature that refuses to scramble above 8C, we enjoyed a walk in weather which made itself interesting by changing by the moment.

We weren't the only ones out. There were plenty of rabbits busy on the serious business of enjoying the succulent grass....

 ....in fields where none of the sheep was lying down - supposed to be a warning of the sort of wet weather which, if any of the sheep had looked up from their meal, they would have seen heaving over the hill towards them. They were also too busy eating to notice a few small bird swooping between them....

....our second sighting this year of swallows. Now if anyone has some justification for complaining about the weather, it is these recent returnees from the sunny warmth of sub-Saharan Africa.

At Home

Tsuro the Scottish rabbit has made himself very much at home in our back garden. While he wanders all over the area shown in this picture, he's most often to be found in the pond, usually in front of the marsh grass on the far side where.... 

....he sits very comfortably, protected from the weather. There's little chance of him being bothered by the pond filling: it's been so dry here that it would take some extremely heavy rain for its water level to rise.

Tsuro spends a fair amount of time washing himself. Rabbits are cleanly animals which spend time preening their fur. They also have toilet areas away from where they sleep.

Tsuro's fortunate in that he has some very useful neighbours. The wood pigeons, from their vantage points on top of the fences, make excellent lookouts.

So Tsuro has settled in well.  There's only one problem, the inevitable one, and....

....I suppose we're going to have to learn to live with it.

It isn't just the aubretia, we've also seen him....

....having a go at three other plants, though his main diet does seem to be grass.

So Tsuro's welcome to graze on a few of our flowers - as long as he doesn't invite all his friends and relatives to a party or, worse, to come and live with him.

The African Rabbit

Rabbits have always been special to me, this association dating back to the Geraldine Elliot books which my mother read to my brother and me when, as small boys in the second Mombasa house we had in Cliff Avenue, we were required to join her on her bed during our compulsory afternoon siestas. I have written about these books before - here. One of their main characters was Kalulu the rabbit, who was the trickster in Bantu folk lore, whose stories were transported to the Caribbean and Americas by slaves from West Africa, in which he became the character Br'er Rabbit. So, from an early age, I learned that rabbits were clever.

In fact, the African rabbit isn't a rabbit but a hare. My first recollection of seeing one 'in the wild' was on one of those miserable days when I had just boarded an aeroplane departing from Nairobi airport on my return to school in England after a summer holiday in Mombasa. As the 'plane taxied out onto the runway to take off, I recall seeing a 'rabbit' feeding on the grass a short distance from the 'plane, this noisy silver monster not bothering it in the slightest. It was one of those occasions when I swore I would never forget the moment: and I haven't.

My next encounter with rabbits was on the lawns at the rear of Telham Court, the building which housed my prep school, Glengorse. The boys weren't usually allowed access to these lawns but, one sunny summer's day, the headmaster, who took us for Art, permitted me to go on to the lawn to sketch some rabbits which were happily feeding there. I managed to crawl very close to them, and produced some rather pleasing pictures.

Tsuro remains with us, having taken up residence in the marsh grass which surrounds our pond. I do rather worry for him as there are some large crows coming in to the garden to feed on the small birds' food, but he seems very capable of looking after himself. And he is behaving himself: he seems quite content to eat the grass and not our plants.

The Unexpected

We left home this morning to drive to Littleferry with the thermometer registering a blistering 8C. Fortunately, the northerly wind was light but the low temperature suggested that the objective of our visit - to see if the first wild orchids were showing - was unlikely to be achieved. That said, we almost immediately found....

....a small colony of what I have identified as marsh cranesbill, a geranium variety which may be an escapee from one of the local gardens. If the cranesbill was a little unexpected this early, the....

....two small jellyfish found stranded along last night's high tide line were even more so. We hardly saw a jellyfish last summer so perhaps they're making a timely start this year.

Leaving the beach to walk back to the car along the paths which criss-cross the links, we found something even more unexpected in such cool conditions....

....a small skipper; and then, to make it quite clear that this was not a one-off, a second, both of which stayed very still while their pictures were taken.

Rather as we had anticipated, we didn't find any orchids but, as if to make up for our disappointment, the dainty viola pansies were out in force; and when we.....
 

....returned home, Tsuro was here to greet us.