The Scots word dreich perfectly describes a variety of weather only found in this country - wet, cold, grey, misty and miserable - and the last couple of days have perfectly illustrated it. Today was particularly disappointing as the forecast had promised a fine afternoon, so we left our daily constitutional until after lunch. Yesterday....
....was forecast to be, and was, duly, utterly dismal, a forecast which didn't deter us from taking a picnic with us and eating it sitting on a damp rock in the rain.
Fortunately, with the tides low during the day we can take full advantage of the beach even if....
....there is less and less sand on it. Sand beaches do have a habit of taking a holiday during the winter, migrating out under the waves and then reappearing in the spring.
Below the blanket of sand on the Golspie beach lies a layer of cobbles. Those further out from the shore, which are exposed at low tide throughout the year, have seaweed clinging to them, and....
....this, along with the piles of kelp caught against the harbour arm, seems to provide a rich hunting ground for the local waders. They're almost invisible in this picture but....
....there were about twenty sanderling so busy feeding amongst the rocks that they ignored our approach.
The wide variety of different birds helps to cheer us on these walks. Including sanderling, on this afternoon's walk we saw at least six species of wader, including curlew, oystercatcher, redshank and ringed plover.
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