Saturday, February 29, 2020

Friday, February 28, 2020

Tracks in the Snow

With yesterday's snow still lying on the upper slopes of Beinn Bhraggie we....

....walked up through the forestry, quickly coming onto trackways where the snow lay thick and crisp enough for tracks to be clearly visible, mostly those of humans, a trail bike and dogs, but also of more interesting things.

Some are fairly easy to identify, like these ones of a rabbit, but the tiny trail running left to right might be a bird but seems more likely to have been a small mammal.

With a size 10 boot for scale, this is a deer but complicated by the fact that two impressions from the same animal are superimposed - forefoot and hind foot. It might be a red deer while....

....this, according to my research, could be either a roe or fallow deer. I would guess the former because we have seen roe deer in the forestry, and their tracks are larger than the fallow.

We followed two of these trails, possibly of small dogs with rather short legs moving in the opposite direction to the single boot mark at bottom right.

Other tracks are more difficult to identify but these may be the most exciting. Here there are those of a man with his dog walking along the trackway, with something crossing later from bottom right to top left, seemingly hopping with its feet together. This is very likely to have been a pine marten.

Thursday, February 27, 2020

First Signs of Spring - 1

I have difficulty in accepting that snowdrops in flower, lovely though they may be, are the first signs of spring as many of them, along with daffodils, pansies, primula and several other flowers which have been out for several weeks, are the products of some careful breeding. No, for me the first true sign of spring is when....

....something appears which hasn't been seen or, in this case, heard in many months.

This is a skylark singing his heart out high above Golspie golf course. He's one of at least four males which have arrived in the last few days, before the females, to stake out the best territory so that, when the ladies do arrive, he will be their top choice for mate.

In southern England skylarks don't migrate but up here, where the winter is more bitter, they disappear south for a few months.

We watched him yesterday on a sunny if chill morning but felt for him and his fellows when....

 ...the snow came overnight and settled, even along the beach.

Skylarks weren't the only birds we were thrilled to see yesterday. This very distant photo is of a goldcrest, a tiny bird which lives in forestry and which is, as a result, very difficult to see and photograph. There were at least three of them: we'd like to see lots more.

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Of....

There are several benches along Golspie's short waterfront, some provided by Highland Council, others by private citizens, usually in memory of someone held dear who enjoyed....

....the views of sunrises, or watching the antics of birds, seals and dolphins out in the Moray Firth, or playing with their family on the sandy beach.

I have remarked on this particular inscription several times. I do not know who Carol Collings was but, as I read it, I envied the words 'of Achindour'.

Carol belonged somewhere. Her somewhere was Achindour, and the 'of' suggests that she was born there, lived there, loved there, brought up her children there, welcomed her grandchildren there and, finally died there, all very happily. And it makes me wonder whether I, as I approach the latter years of my life, would have been happier if....

....I had spent my whole life in one place: 'Jon Haylett of Dar-es-Salaam'.

But then I would never have lived in the other places I so loved, like the house in Mombasa which had this incomparable view, or the Hoey house at Nyali that lay right beside a palm-fringed beach, or the happy homes we made in Rhodesia, Maldon, Kilchoan, and more.

We have lived in places where the people who felt they 'belonged' there told us quite bluntly that theirs was an exclusive club, that, however long we stayed, we could never be 'of' that place. In a strange way, it hurt, because it was true.

So I have to reconcile myself to being 'of nowhere', a nomad, rootless - but perhaps a man with a compensating richness in life from the interesting but transient places we experienced and the many lovely people we've known.

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

A Game

It's a game we played as children, running down the beach towards a breaking wave and then leaving it until the last minute to turn and scamper back, fast enough for the swash not to catch us.

Sanderling play the same game. These two didn't stop to feed, there didn't seem to be any other purpose, they just.... played.

Monday, February 24, 2020

An Exotic Jellyfish

We've now seen three of these small, colourless and rather characterless jellyfish washed up along the Golspie beach but had been unable to identify them - until Rachael sorted us out. She, too, had seen some at Golspie, and the reason we had been unable to identify it was that we had been searching on the net for British jellyfish - and this one's native waters are along the western coast of North America.

It's called the crystal jellyfish, Aequorea victoria, and it's bioluminescent, the rim of its bell glowing green in the dark. This might be of no more than passing interest except that two proteins involved in its bioluminescence, aequorin and green fluorescent protein (GFP), were discovered by Osamu Shimomura and his colleagues, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work in applying these as markers in biological research.

The jellyfish was first reported in the Moray Firth in 2009. How they got here is a bit of a mystery but it seems most likely that they were brought from the Pacific in a cargo ship which cleaned out its bilges off the east coast of Scotland.

Sunday, February 23, 2020

Balblair Woods

With a brisk and chill westerly blowing this morning we headed for the relative protection of Balblair Wood, once again searching for the Scottish crossbill which, once again, did not put in an appearance.

We spent some time in the bird hide on the banks of Loch Fleet from which, with the tide coming in....

....we had a good view across marshland to....

....a mass of ducks and waders. Immediately obvious were the oystercatchers and curlews - there must have been well over fifty of the latter - and smaller numbers of redshanks, visible in the foreground of this picture.

While the birds in the foreground of this picture are curlews, those landing have long, straight beaks. The pictures aren't clear enough to identify them for certain but they may be bar-tailed godwits which are reported to winter on Loch Fleet.

Also on parade were small and very busy groups of what were probably sanderlings - seen in this picture - while the ducks included teal, wigeon and shelduck.

Saturday, February 22, 2020

Kipper

We had kipper for supper last night, and very good it was too. The ingredients on the label describes our meal beautifully: "Herring (fish), salt, smoke. Clupea harengus. Caught at sea, northeast Atlantic."

We bought it earlier in the day from our local fish merchant, A G Campbell, whose shop is on the other side of the road from us. It cost £2.20 and we were told it came from Aberdeen. While it was packed in plastic, the fishmonger was also selling a selection of fish from a chilled slab, including haddock fillets, cod fillets, whitebait (in small bags), fresh farmed salmon fillets, and lemon sole.

Can't be many fish shops like this left.

Friday, February 21, 2020

A Midden?

This picture was taken looking back along the coast track towards the village from a point about half a mile to the north of Golspie. The ploughed field on the right, part of the Sutherland Estate, has extensive sandy patches but the pale area towards the bottom right of the picture isn't sand but....

....a mass of seashells which have been turned up by the plough. The shelly area in the picture is about ten foot across, and the shells are....

....mainly winkles - 'wilks' or 'welks' on the west coast - along with limpets, cockles and mussels.

While there may be other good explanations for this pile of shells - farmers often scattered them to add calcium carbonate to acid fields - this may be a midden, a human rubbish tip, created when a few of our ancestors sat down together to enjoy a meal of shellfish which they had collected from the weed-covered rocks on the lower beach not thirty yards away.

Thursday, February 20, 2020

Buzzards

The mixture of hills, woodland and open farm fields around Golspie should be a perfect habitat for buzzards, yet we have seen few so, this morning, on a day of brisk southwesterly winds, sudden snow showers and brilliant sunshine, I went in search of buzzards.

I walked northwards along the track of the ancient coast road, past Dunrobin Castle to a point where we had seen a buzzard before. I walked - it was too cold to stand still - and walked, and gave up, and turned back, and was about to give up altogether when....

 ....a buzzard called above the line of the trees. It wheeled above me, allowing several pictures....

 ....one of which may show a tag on its right wing.

As it continued to call another buzzard rose to meet it and they commenced a classic buzzard mating flight....

....wheeling and diving and calling to each other. They disappeared over the trees, to reappear shortly afterwards with a third buzzard.

We have seen a pair before, perhaps this pair, and seeing three at one time is heartening, but this area should be supporting many more.

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Along the Beach

This morning we walked along the beach to the southwest of the village as far as Littleferry and the entrance to Loch Fleet, where the falling tide was drawing a strong current out of the loch.

Such a walk is never without interest. Male members of a small group of long-tailed ducks were fighting each other just off the beach, so engrossed in dashing and splashing and diving that they didn't see us until we were within a few yards of them, at which point they made a hasty retreat.

We saw few waders along the beach, small groups of oystercatchers and some redshanks, and this lone ringed plover - suitably named as, if you look closely at its right leg, it has a ring on it.

Fish standings included a small ray, much chewed by the gulls, a flat fish - probably a dab - which was consumed in a single gulp by a large black-backed gull, and a couple of these fry, which may explain why several gulls were paddling around in the shallows.

This isn't the first time we've come across one of these small, colourless jellyfish but I still can't find it on the internet. Perhaps they aren't jellyfish. It shouldn't bother me but I am really irritated when I can't identify something.

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Changing Season

It's the time of year when one is becoming rather tired of winter and looking for the first signs of spring, yet they always seem slow in coming. The snowdrops are out but there's little other sign of change - except, perhaps in the birds along the shore.

A visit to Lidl at Tain yesterday saw me down at the waterfront looking at the ducks and waders, and there are significant changes since the last visit towards the end of January. For a start, there are many fewer birds on the scalps, only the number of oystercatchers increasing while there was....

....a huge decrease in the flocks of widgeon and....

 ....only small groups of teal.

However, the biggest change has been along Golspie's beach where we're no longer seeing any of the flocks of sanderling, above, or ringed plover - and we do miss them! The only waders along the beach are oystercatchers, curlews and redshanks.

Monday, February 17, 2020

Another Ship!

Ships round here seem to be a bit like London buses - you wait ages for one to come along, and then another turns up.

This is the Silver Crystal which was at anchor near the BBC Adriatic this afternoon but didn't stay long....

....heading northeast up the coast towards her destination of Nescaupstadur, Iceland.

The Silver Crystal is a Norwegian refrigerated cargo ship launched in 1991.

Sunday, February 16, 2020

Storm Dennis

At ten this morning Storm Dennis looked as if it was going to deliver the 50mph gusts the BBC was forecasting for Golspie (image from the earth.nullschool site, here) but when we had donned our full wet weather gear and emerged onto the seafront....

....the beach was in bright sunshine. Others had obviously heeded the forecast as there was not another soul to be seen on the sands and....

....the BBC Adriatic was still anchored off the Dornoch Firth - she's seen here with Tarbat Ness lighthouse in the background.

We walked for almost an hour southwest along the beach straight into a strengthening wind but turned back when the grey clouds seen in this picture began to deliver some stinging raindrops. However, by the time we were home the clouds had cleared and our wet-weather gear was almost dry. The sun was still out after lunch so we took a second, rather more gentle stroll in the Dunrobin woods in the early afternoon.

The BBC forecast was, once again, hopelessly inaccurate. We tend to go on the Met Office forecast which was broadly right for what has, so far, been a very tame Dennis today. But then, this is what we're coming to expect in Golspie - a rather gentle climate which may yet bite us.