Wildlife News

Each time we walk down to the village through Speckled Wood we hope to see a butterfly - but we haven'r seen one there in some time. It's just too cold. We tend to go that way at about ten in the morning and at that time, with the sky cloudy and an easterly breeze, the temperature struggles to climb above 14C.  In the garden we've seen the very occasional butterfly, mostly a lone white or an isolated peacock, and then only for a minute or two - hence no picture. In fact, our largest population of resident butterflies are the two whites which have taken up residence indoors in our house and show no signs of leaving.

So we have to obtain our pleasures from the birds that come to visit us. The great spotted woodpecker which first visited us a fortnight ago is now coming to feed on both the peanuts and the fat cakes. We're also seeing....

....plenty of siskins (above), goldfinches and greenfinches, all of them brilliantly dressed. However, our pleasure with the birds is being marred by....

....individuals like this greenfinch, which show signs of trichomonosis, the disease which has brought about a 60% decline in greenfinch populations since 2005 and which is now also beginning to affect our local chaffinches. We do our best to stop its spread: the water bowls are cleaned out and refilled daily, we've reduced the number of feeders and those we do use are regularly dipped in a Jeyes fluid bath - but the disease persists.

Flotsam

As a boy, we once had a beach like this in front of our house. It was a big, elongate bungalow, its rooms running in a line parallel to the sands so all, except the kitchen which was at the back, had direct access across a veranda and a lawn to the beach.

I was twelve at the time, my brother two years younger, and our day started, just after sunrise, with us running out of our room, across the lawn with its high coconut palms, and out onto this.... our beach, a beach we as good as owned.

Some days, the best days, were spent entirely on the beach. The only company we had was a nondescript rough-haired dachshund called Suzie who used to race up and down the beach with the next-door neighbour's beautiful saluki, and our mother, who only worried about us if the tide was high and the waves a bit vicious.

One of our favourite occupations was walking along the overnight high-tide line, mostly formed of odd pieces of seaweed and remains from the coconut trees but which sometimes contained treasures such as these. The shell on the left is the violet sea shell Janthina janthina which floats across the ocean held up by a mass of bubbles which it secretes.  Janthina feeds on....

....other pelagic species such as the by-the-wind sailor and the Portuguese man-o'-war - this sailor was pictured at Sanna, on Ardnamurchan.

The second shell is the internal skeleton of a squid, Spirula spirula. While we often found this 'ram's horn', we never found a dead spirula squid because it lives in the depths of the ocean.

I didn't know any of these scientific facts at the time, though I wish now that I had. As far as I was concerned, these creatures were simply part of the wonders of Nature, and I loved them for that.

More Wildlife Woes

We're currently in a run of moderate but gusting westerlies which are bringing heavy rain showers into the Moray Firth which consistently miss Golspie, so to add to the low temperatures we're now seeing the ground dry up - one consequence of which is that we have heightened risk of moor fires.

When we first came to this part of Golspie the many gable ends of the new buildings were perfect places for house martins to nest. This year, we've seen no house martins building nests. In fact, we've seen precious few house martins, sand martins or swallows. 

This may be connected to the insect populations. With temperatures so low - today's midday temperature was 17C....

....the insects continue to struggle, with some plants, like our raspberries, benefiting from the attention of the local bees and hover flies more than others. Sadly, our strawberries look as if they're going to produce a miserable crop compared to the raspberries.

Meanwhile, we continue to see few butterflies. I don't think we saw a single butterfly on the wing yesterday but this one, either a large or a small white, was waiting in the workshop for better weather.

As always, there is a brighter side to life. This is as close as I have ever been to willow warblers, a few feet away, my attention being drawn to them by the cajoling noises this small group was making. It turned out to be two parents trying to control and feed their noisy young.

It's good to see a family of this pretty little bird, particularly as we've had a cuckoo calling along the ridge at the back of the house for some weeks now, and willow warbler nests are a common target for the cuckoo.

Wildlife Worries

This should be a wonderful time of year for observing and enjoying the local wildlife. Sonny is settling in well and seems to prefer feeding on the grass cut short by the strimmer rather then the longer grass left specially for him, and....

....the small group of northern marsh orchids which live up the farm track not fifty metres from our front door are coming in to exuberant bloom, but all this wonderful life is being marred by....

....the dreadful dearth of butterflies. A peacock, a very battered painted lady, and this white are all we've seen so far this week.

Yes, temperatures are low for the time of year; and, yes, it's a bit breezy, and, yes, there are thunderstorms around though no rain has landed on us - much as we need it - but we're not seeing butterflies in any environment - fields, woodland, verges, garden. Worse, as I wrote the other day, we're conspicuously short of insects of any sort - which, making an effort to look on the positive side, is good for our young brassicas.

Mrs MW tells me I'm too pessimistic. I hope she's right.

A Memory

I still have memory flashes, moments when a scene from my past suddenly explodes into my consciousness, like a great rocket illuminating the dark ramblings of my mind. I have fewer, which is a shame as these pictures are of special places, so I try to hold on to them as they fade, then perhaps spend a few minutes hunting to see if I have any photographs of the place that might help recall that moment.

Sandwich Bay is one such place. Our visit was on one of those expeditions upon which tourists are encouraged to go so they can say they have seen true desert, but an unusual desert in that it runs right down to the sea; and the more unusual because, in places, a high proportion of its sand grains....

....are pink and brown, not quartz as in ordinary deserts but garnets. These grains are, perhaps, a clue to why, mostly now buried beneath the sand....

....a few buildings stand rotting slowly, mummified by the heat, for garnets are associated with a particular suite of minerals, and this is the legendary Skeleton Coast of Namibia along which, in days gone by, it was possible to wander the shore picking up diamonds.

In The Garden

Considering we are now well into June and, therefore, into 'summer', things are not good in our garden. For a start, the number of insects is dismally low, with only a few of our many flowering plants attracting attention. So, for example, the chives, which are in glorious flower and would normally be covered in insects, currently attract only this one type of bumblebee.

The flowers which seem most attractive to the few flying insects we have are, surprisingly, the raspberries. I have to say I am both pleased and relieved about this as I do like my raspberries, and Mrs MW does make a very good raspberry jam.

The situation with our butterflies is dire. Each day we see one, or at most two, of which this peacock is the most common visitor. I can only think that it's the low temperatures which are restricting them: when we left the house just after nine this morning to walk down to the village the mercury stood at a perishing 13C.

At least we can be relieved that one species is thriving. Having commented some weeks ago on the total lack of starlings we now have a surplus, with hoards of young ones attacking and emptying the small birds' feeders.

In the short periods when there aren't any starlings around, we're seeing other species that haven't put in an appearance for some months, like the house sparrows. It's good to see them back.

Our 'normal' population of small birds has changed a bit. While we have plenty of goldfinches and siskins, the tit family is very thin on the ground, with the coal tits almost completely absent.

Our resident robin, disgusted at the greedy behaviour of the starlings, has found a solution to his craving for our excellent bird fat - by coming into the room where we store the bird foods and helping himself - and he's very welcome!

Sonny

We were thrilled this morning to wake up to find our new rabbit back on the path below the sitting-room window, enjoying a breakfast of grass and clover.

He's now established here so we felt we ought to give him a name. Following readers' suggestions on last Thursday's post we have decided to call him Sungura Secundus, sungura being KiSwahili for rabbit and secundus being Latin for second - so,'Second Rabbit', or Sonny for short.