The Resident Sparrowhawk

The sparrowhawk we'd been seeing occasionally has now taken up almost permanent residence in our back garden where there is.... or, rather, there was a good supply of well-fed prey. He spends most of his time sitting on a prominent perch just watching our and our neighbour's gardens. 

Most of the small birds are well aware of his presence and stay away. The consumption of sunflower kernels has therefore almost dropped to zero.

 In the above picture, the hawk is at bottom right and a chaffinch is perched on the branches towards the top left.

Some of the hawk's time is spent preening. Yesterday, he spent a good hour cleaning himself, and only when this was finished did he....

....start to hunt again. Here he's on the ground under the feeders having chased a small bird there, without catching it.

Finally, this morning, one of his hunts was successful - between his talons are the pitiful remains of what might have been a tit which, small as it was, he....

....tore apart and ate with evident relish

Seconds after this picture was taken he suddenly dropped off this perch and shot under the table where we do our potting. Few of the birds go there, the only exceptions being the dunnocks and robins. Oh dear - I like the dunnocks and robins.

Up into the Mist

Loch Lunndaidh lies a couple of miles to the west of Golspie and can easily be accessed from Drummuie along one of the....

....estate tracks. The loch used to be one of our favourite walks - when we first came here we explored the ruins of the clachan at the western end of it - but reaching the loch now is increasingly challenging. However, today, with the rain stopped and the wind dropped, I set off to see how far I could get.

The walking was eerily pleasant, with the mist down over the hills but lifting occasionally to give....

....views down to Loch Fleet and beyond.

There are a couple of gates across the track but they offer pedestrian access. This one used to mark the end of the forestry so on the open muir beyond it we saw wildlife such as red deer and fox but about four years ago the land was fenced, planted mainly with conifers, and the deer culled.

I walked a little further, to the point where, in days gone by, two tracks crossed, a point marked by a signpost which, on a typical day, probably hardly sees a passer-by. 

I turned back there. The loch is another kilometre or so on and I didn't feel I had the energy to make it.

Perhaps I should have risen to the challenge. Perhaps, if I'd had others with me, I would have had the confidence to manage it. But we have always had the determination never to allow our enjoyment of walking Scotland's wilderness to cause problems for others.

A Break in the Weather

This was the view across the Firth just after 8.30 this morning with a weak sun struggling to break through the clouds that have obscured the sky these last couple of weeks; and when we went for a walk....

....it didn't rain, not one drop - which makes a very pleasant change. However, there was still a heavy surf breaking on the coastline below Golspie golf club, the outer bar being formed, I would guess, of the sand the waves have been steadily stripping from the beach.

The sparrowhawk seems to have taken up almost permanent residence in our garden, making life miserable for the small birds. I now think of going down to the back garden to feed the birds as feeding the sparrowhawk rather than the chaffinches, tits, dunnocks, blackbirds, siskins, goldfinches and robins.

It's hard on the small birds but this is a truly beautiful killing machine, and a very patient one: he's not bothered by us as we move around indoors to watch him.

I hate to admit it but I'm hoping to see him make a kill.... in the interests of science, of course.

Gorse in Flower

The weather continues to be truly miserable, with the same east-southeasterly wind that's been blowing for about seventeen days bringing in cold air from the continent and dismal, sleety showers - not that anything worries the gorse growing along the sides of the forest tracks, for it is....

....in exuberant flower. Not only is it proudly showing off its own spring-coloured blooms but it's also playing host to the 'flowers' of a couple of....

....very cheerful fungi, including this 15mm diameter little beauty which I think....

....may be velvet shank fungus and....

....this white fungus which I have failed to identify.

In addition, the local gorse is supporting specimens of the bright yellow witches' fungus, though I didn't find any of that today.

Dunrobin Woods

This morning, with no sign of any change in the weather, we took the car to the northern end of the village where, by walking in the Dunrobin woodland, we could avoid what was almost a gale blowing along the exposed shore.

It's difficult to find anything very exciting in the woods at this time of year, with the dominant colours greens and browns, but in places....

....the clumps of moss showed themselves in vibrant greens; and those greens contrasted with, in just one privileged place....

....the spectacular colours of a dozen or so scarlet elf cups.

Happily, Mrs MW also found a new fungus....

....a large one, this pile being about 8" high. As so often seems to happen, this fungal fruiting body was not alone, but had three others around it.

To avoid walking into the wind we stuck to the woods as far as the castle and then intended to drop down to the shore to return, jet-propelled, along the exposed waterfront, but the castle had closed the access down to the shore as part of the refurbishment of the building's exterior, so we had to return through the woods.

Stuck

There was a time when Britain's weather was described as 'changeable', and we were told this was because of our proximity to the Atlantic and our exposure to the rain-bearing depressions which came at us across it.

No more. Now we tend to have long periods of the same weather followed by a change to another long period of a different weather. So, at the moment, these happy sheep are enjoying life in a persistent, cold, 20mph-plus east-southeasterly wind bringing wintery showers, a weather which has been 'stuck' since 21st January and shows no sign of letting up for another week at least; before which we had snow and other wintery weather from the beginning of the month.

As an ex-teacher of geography I look to the surface pressure charts which clearly show the reason for our present east-southeasterly - the winds circulate clockwise round the low pressure areas L and anticlockwise round the highs, H. The current arrangement of the lows and highs funnels cold air from the continent across northern Britain. None of which explains the weather's new habit of getting stuck.

We've lived before in places where the weather is monotonous, and I tend to prefer that predictability, particularly in countries where the default weather is nice and warm. So, while tropical counties like Jamaica do have seasons, usually wet season and dry, there often isn't a huge difference between the two.

Both our teaching contracts abroad, in Rhodesia and Jamaica, were attempts to find a warm country where we could settle for the rest of our lives. The way things turned out, we failed, and the present weather makes me regret that failure.

Feeding Station Visitor

In this cold, windy weather, with so many small birds congregating around our feeding stations, it was almost inevitable that this visitor should pop in for a bite of lunch - which he did, yesterday. He missed his intended target so hung around close to one of the most popular sunflower feeders....

....lying in wait for one of the small birds to arrive which wasn't already aware of his presence.

The bright orange-brown striped underparts indicate that this is a male sparrowhawk. Earlier in the week both Mrs MW and I had seen what we're almost certain was a female. There's plenty of prey here for both.

After a few minutes of patient but unproductive waiting the sparrowhawk moved so he was better hidden....

....but after a few minutes moved again, so he had a better view of the garden, moving around all the time as if he was aware that we were watching and was anxious to show off his finery.

Then the small bird he had been waiting for arrived, landing on the fence close behind him - and a moment after this picture was taken he was in hot pursuit as the bird flew high above us but, as far as we could see, he once again failed to make a kill.

Understandably, after he had flown off it took the birds several minutes to start to return to the feeders.