Cuckoo, Primroses & Tadpoles

Yesterday's weather was bright and warm enough for a second butterfly species to be on the wing, this small white sitting contentedly soaking up the sun on raspberry leaves, joining the two peacocks which were also in the garden, but working the aubretia flowers.

Today started well, with the sight from the kitchen sink of a red squirrel trying - and failing - to prise some peanuts out of the birds' feeders.

Sadly, this morning's weather had deteriorated since yesterday, with a cold easterly blowing, the temperature not rising above 9C, and....

....all the sheep in the adjoining farmer's fields very firmly sitting down - a sign that they did not think things would improve.

So I wrapped myself up in almost winter gear and set off on what has, in the past, always been a very frustrating walk. This gate is usually locked, preventing walkers from enjoying a circular route of about an hour - but today I found it unlocked. Better still, just in front of the gate were....

....about twenty primrose plants. Nowhere else on any of our walks round here have we seen any primroses in flower this spring, so there must be something very special about this spot.

Then, to join the many birds singing, and despite the temperature, a cuckoo called, and continued to call along the Bheinn Bhraggie ridge for half an hour. It may well be that the timing is right for the cuckoos to exploit the willow warblers, which have been arriving in increasing numbers.

To my considerable surprise, as their eggs have, for some weeks, been covered in slimy brown silt, a whole mass of tadpoles have appeared in the small seep that runs out of the quarry above our house where, in previous years, we've also seen palmate newts.

To complete a very enjoyable walk I found two rabbits in the Rabbit Field from which, over the winter, they had completely disappeared. The rabbits were some distance apart but I'm hoping that they'll manage to meet and re-fill the field with their families.

The Roe Corner Roe Deer

On our way down to the village, as we approach Roe Corner, the plantation of Scots pines is cut by an area of land cleared by the electricity board to prevent trees falling on their power line. This area is now dominated by dead bracken fronds, and it is amongst these that we are seeing the three Roe Corner roe deer mentioned in recent posts.

One of them is a buck. He seems to be the more nervous of the three as, when we walk past the clearing, he breaks cover first, and heads up the hill away from us, followed shortly after by....

....the two does, one slightly larger than the other.

We're seeing the trio fairly frequently now, frequently enough to conclude that we're meeting them on their way from early morning grazing in a field the other side of Roe Corner to the thicker and less human-visited forestry higher on the slopes of Bheinn Bhraggie, where they spend most of their daylight hours. This seems a logical organisation of their day as the path through Roe Corner becomes increasingly busy with humans and their - often out-of-control - dogs.

We saw the deer again this morning. Since we're actively looking for them we now approach Roe Corner very quietly, with the result that the two does were quite close to us when they finally ran up the hill after the buck. With a bit of luck they'll become more and more accustomed to us, and will perhaps allow us to approach increasingly close.

Pansies

We set off this morning to stretch our legs along the miles of sand exposed at Littleferry by the low tide, seeing nothing in the way of wildlife except a small flock of oystercatchers and a couple of gulls so, instead of returning as we usually do along the sands, we cut across....

....the links, the area of grassland and scrub which runs along the back of the beach, in the hope of finding a few more wildflower firsts for the year.

There was no shortage of daisies and dandelions, the latter very popular with the few bees and hoverflies which were out and about, but we found no new wildflowers with the exception of....

....one of our favourites, wild pansies, Viola tricolor, of which we found only four flowering plants.

Spring Delayed.... Again

A couple of days of sunny weather trick us, and the peacock butterflies, into thinking that spring has finally arrived but today has brought us back to reality with....

....a truly miserable westerly wind bringing cloud and spots of rain and a temperature which can't even struggle above 10C.

Our walk this morning took us above the rabbit fields where, to add to the excitement of Thursday's sighting of the first rabbit in ages, we've now seen....

....a second rabbit, one of the rather unusual partially white-coated rabbits we saw last summer - which we had assumed, because the white made them so much more visible, had been hunted to extinction by the local buzzards.

The woodland section of the walk included another glimpse of the same three roe deer we've been seeing at Roe Corner which, once again, were quick to take off up the hill.

These miserable temperatures are hardly conducive to serious courtship, so the birds were remarkably quiet in the woods. This blackbird did make an effort to sing, but I had hoped to hear more willow warblers, a few having arrived over the last few days.

A Slow Spring

Spring is taking its time. It seems in no hurry this year, as if it knows that winter still has a bite - so we've only now found the first dog violets growing on a sunny bank and....

....this morning we found, in the pine plantation, the first two wood sorrel flowers of the year.

With the flowers out the bees are appearing, though still in very small numbers even though we've been enjoying some brighter and warmer weather.

This is the queue for breakfast in our back garden, mostly chaffinches but we also have siskins and goldfinches, all rather wary because....

....Harry the sparrowhawk is back, often to be found lying in wait in his favourite location, where he can see the small birds but they can't see him.

It's always good to see the local gang of long-tailed tits, always cheerful, always chatty, but it's so sad to find only three again, when they should be going round in flocks of eight and more.

At least this was a cheering sight - the first rabbit we've seen out in the fields in ages, and it was in the big Rabbit Field where we saw dozens playing last summer. 

A Hut Circle

After Sunday's 'adventure' I realised that our walk had passed very close to one of the Golspie area's hut circles - and it was easy to find it on a satellite view. It's marked here as SC, B being the burn pictured in the previous post.

So, in this morning's beautiful spring weather, I set off up Adder Track - named for the adder we'd seen twice just beyond this gate last summer - to find the circle which was...,

....once I was looking for it, staring me in the face.

The circle is covered in dead bracken at this time of year but it's clearly visible in this picture with the two gorse bushes on its far side. The circular wall is 1.5m thick and the internal diameter about 10m, making the hut's total diameter about 13m. Considering it may be two to three millennia old, it's in very good condition.

One thing that's remarkable about these iron-age houses is that their builders made no attempt to conceal them, preferring to choose a site with a good view. It would, therefore, have been visible from miles away. This suggests that, at the time they were built, the world was an unusually peaceful place.

Not only did the dwelling have superb views, it also had clean running water not 20m from its front door and, in the hillside behind it, plenty of space for fields.

As I was leaving, the site's present owner appeared, hanging around long enough to make sure I had gone. 

I have written about our previous visit to the site here.

Tiger Country

The sun has been out again today, making it quite warm enough on my walk this morning to sit for some time on a rock by the side of a path and think about important things - like, how successful the local gorse has been in recolonising the area of coniferous plantation that was burnt out by a fire in 2018, and....

....how, at first sight, it seems to form as much of a monoculture as a field of farmer's wheat, when a sudden movement caught my eye.

We don't see many tiger beetles but when one does turn up I'm reminded of the first time I saw one, on a similar rough track that runs along the coastline of Ardnamurchan to the east of Ockle. I remember it because of the startling metallic beauty of the insect, and because I recall looking it up on the internet and learning that it is a remarkable hunter, exceptionally fast on its long legs and ruthless in its ability to catch its prey - spiders, caterpillars and ants.

I often bemoan the increasing scarcity of our larger wildlife, such as deer, foxes, pine martens, badgers and, now, rabbits, so this beetle was a timely reminded that there's plenty of excitement still to be found amongst the multitude of much smaller species which inhabit even gorse heathland - like this beautiful insect.