An Empty Beach

We're getting to know Golspie's south beach pretty well now and have learned that, while it's a superb beach with miles of sand, it isn't the most exciting of beaches. For a start not much gets washed up onto it, bar the occasional....

....dead bird or fish - this is a shag who looks all ready to be fossilised to be rediscovered in a few million years' time.

So for Fulton Mackay's wonderful character, Ben Knox, in the film 'Local Hero' this beach would have been useless. Ben lived on and from the beach which Texan 'Mac' MacIntyre needed to buy in order to build Knox Oil's new terminal but Ben wouldn't sell, not even for enough money to buy any beach in the world, an offer he refused because he could not gauge whether any other beach would provide a livelihood through the flotsam that was washed up on it.

Ben Knox came to mind as we walked the beach this morning, sharing it with fewer than half-a-dozen other walkers. It may not be a beach that Ben would have favoured but if one is looking for peace, solitude and huge expanses of lonely sea and sky, it's a great beach.

A Walk in the Glen

We walked up the road to Golspie Tower this morning, stopping to talk to the lady who lives in the farm house there. It's very easy to fall into conversation with local people, who are exceptionally friendly and who seem to have little trouble in accepting incomers such as us. We walked on up the hill and then turned to....

....drop down into the glen of the Golspie Burn. Beneath a bridge we noticed a small weir and, leading from it, a pipe encased in concrete, now with several large holes in it, and guessed that this might once have provided the water to turn the wheel which ground the flour at the mill downstream.

 This was the first of several wooden bridges we crossed as we followed the burn downstream until....

....the glen opened out, the path meandering through open woodland where the bluebells are beginning to wake up. In due course we hope to see them turn the glen into a spectacle of blue, though I would advise any self-preserving bluebell to stay well underground until the weather warms up.

Golspie Tower

The name of our new house comes from the view to the north-northwest where, between the houses at the opposite side of the grassy recreational area, we can see two buildings, a modern house and a lower-profile building which used to be a farm part of which, around 1810, was converted to become the stables for the Golspie Inn. The site also housed a threshing mill, powered by a burn that runs down from the forestry beyond.

The farm was built on the site of the Golspie Tower around 1515. The tower was a mediaeval fortification of which no trace remains but it was not part of the Sutherland lands, and its occupants were at times at odds with the earls.

The tower appears on several early maps, including this one by Jan Jannson dated 1659. It's interesting that Dunrobin is not marked as a castle, as both Golspietour and Skelbe (Skelbo) are.

A fire destroyed the house roof and much of the farm buildings, which were demolished in 1978, leaving the stable block, now a dwelling house.

Birdsong

After a wearying day of trying to establish order in the new house we took a late afternoon walk in low sunshine along the track that runs below Dunrobin Castle and....

....into the mature woodland beyond where we stopped to listen to birdsong - robin, wren, chaffinch, great tit, blue tit, blackbird, dunnock - mesmerising, peaceful, so without care - until....

....all were eclipsed by a song thrush who, after a few shaky warm-up notes, sang from his heart. We stood, listening, spellbound, and so thankful to him for washing our day clean.

We walked gently back along the track refreshed, enjoying the contrasts of light along the rocky shore and the reflections of clouds in a mirror sea....

....diverting briefly to wander along the beach where....

....the retreating tide had left intricate drainage patterns in the sand.

New Friends

So we've moved house and with the house came a garden with only one resident, an extremely scruffy robin. However, the deployment of six bird feeders soon saw our popularity rise. A dunnock was the second visitor and the first onto a feeder - the robin is a bit slow - soon followed by....

....a very smart pair of great tits and....

....a pair of blue tits, who were quick to find a way through the anti-starling mesh around the biggest feeder.

A pair of chaffinches came next, and they were first to use the bird table, minus its mesh.

A pair of pied wagtails also came calling, spending some time in the field next to the house before flying on to the fence to check us out.

So this looks like being a good location for small birds, though I don't suppose it'll be long before the starlings arrive to lower the tone.

Across the field and beyond the ex-Council houses there is a conifer plantation and, in the distance, the hills of Sutherland. But look closely: right in the middle of the picture, in the trees, is a heron, one of three we've seen there at any one time. So we have a heronry to watch.

Small Bird Report

In the previous Small Bird Report - here - we were having a battle to make sure the smaller birds were getting some food. Mainly to keep the starlings off, the grain on our bird table is now protected by 13mm x 13mm galvanised iron mesh. The first bird to find and negotiate one of the three small apertures in the wire was a female sparrow, followed by one of the robins, but we were thrilled....

....to see the return of the coal tit whom we hadn't seen in weeks but who had obviously heard that the table was now relatively free. It quickly found its way in, leaving the watching sparrows even more irate. Sadly, as things busied up, and after a final go at the peanuts, he stayed away.

We have a very select clientele at our feeders. At any one time there are up to ten house sparrows, two or three blackbirds, two dunnocks, several starlings, a blue tit or two, the occasional chaffinch, usually a male....

....and a couple of robins. Unfortunately....

....we are also visited far too frequently by the crow family. The jackdaws clean up any food on the ground while the rooks smash their way in to some feeders using their fearsome bills.

We have two bird baths and have been careful to make sure that we replenish the water after the temperature overnight has dropped below freezing and most water has frozen. The sparrow enjoying himself in this picture was so keen to have a bath that he climbed into the birdbath before the previous occupant, a female blackbird, had finished.

We've had to say a sad farewell to all the small birds who have given us so much pleasure over the winter as we have just moved house. However, we have not gone far, so perhaps news of our new location will filter back and some of our feathery friends will rejoin us.

'The Mannie'

If Beinn Bhraggie dominates Golspie, so does the memorial which stands on its summit. Some locals refer rather affectionately to the statue as 'The Mannie' but several attempts have been made to topple it and the area around its base has been badly vandalised. That such differing views are held about the monument aren't surprising as the man it celebrates was seen by some as a great improver, who did much to develop and bring better conditions to Sutherland, while others view him as little short of a murderer who was responsible for forcibly clearing thousands of tenants from the Sutherland Estate, many of whom subsequently emigrated.

George Granville Leveson-Gowever was an English industrial millionaire, MP, and British ambassador in Paris who, in 1785, married Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, who brought to their union the vast Sutherland Estate, the largest in Europe at the time. Normally, George would have become master of the estate but Elizabeth insisted on retaining control so, in fairness, she should be seen as the more responsible for what followed.

Picture courtesy Wikpedia

In order to effect the desired 'improvements' in Sutherland, the Estate sought to demolish the small townships and remove the many families who had lived there for generations, in order to consolidate the land into larger farms upon which highly profitable sheep could be run. 'The Clearances', as they are known, were carried out with some brutality, and many of the families who were not persuaded to resettle on smallholdings, 'crofts', elsewhere on the estate, emigrated.

The statue can be seen from miles away, with George staring out across a land divided over his legacy. Personally, I dislike the statue and would be very happy if someone demolished it, preferably spectacularly and with a huge 'bang' which we could all watch.

Low Tide

We walked along an almost deserted beach at low tide in the late afternoon, briskly on our way out to work up some warmth in the chill easterly breeze, and more slowly homeward, searching amongst the small boulders exposed by the sea....

....for any wildlife feeding in the weed. There were common gulls aplenty and....

....the occasional oystercatcher, noticeably singly or in pairs instead of the large groups of winter, but none of the redshanks that often feed with them.

Nor was there any sign of ringed plovers or sanderlings, their place being taken by a small group of turnstones, a bird we haven't seen in some weeks, not yet fully into their summer plumage.

The Troglodyte

There is no shortage of wrens in this part of Sutherland. They're most often heard before they're seen: the wren may be one of our smallest birds but it's renowned for its loud and often complex, scolding song.

They're usually to be seen in tangled undergrowth, often around the base of trees, and almost always perched on a vantage point from which they can see what's going on.

So at first sight this great pile of rocks which forms the sea wall to the southwest of Golspie hardly looks an attractive place for a wren to call home but....

....this one lives there very happily. It's an appropriate dwelling: the Eurasian wren is Troglodytes troglodytes, a troglodyte being a cave dweller, so this must seem like a multi-roomed palace.

Our wrens are a member of a very successful family, there being something like 88 different species within the Troglodytidae worldwide.

A Fox Encounter

We walked westwards today, up the forestry track that rises behind Culmaily to Loch Lunndaidh, on a fine morning following an overnight frost. As we went, the sound of the traffic on the A9 dropped away and we were left with nothing but birdsong.

Once through the boundary fence the scenery opens up to miles of moorland on one side and to....

....fine views south and southeastwards towards Loch Fleet, and it was here we fell in with a man who had been a welder all his life but now spent as much time as possible, like us, in the outdoors. He was extolling the local wildlife, particularly the ospreys which should be back shortly, when Mrs MW spotted....

....a fox coming up the brae. He crossed the track close in front of us....

....taking his time and evidently unaware of our presence before...

....working his way across the open land cleared by the muir fire two years ago. At this point he was almost directly downwind of us so we were not surprised....

....to see his pace suddenly quicken until he disappeared over the brow of the hill.

He was a large fox, obviously well-fed, the ex-welder suggesting he had been enjoying the remains of a red deer which we had also seen at Lunndaidh township on 4th March - post here. So we parted, agreeing that, yes, the wildlife around here could be rather good.

South and North

The beach southwards from Golspie ends at the mouth of Loch Fleet, where the tide races in and out through a narrow entrance. Over the years the beach has advanced seawards leaving behind it....

....a wide area of sandy-soiled 'links' - on the west coast this might be termed 'machair'.

We walked there yesterday. It promises to be a fascinating area - for example, we saw good evidence that frog orchids thrive there. However, at this time of year it looks fairly dead except that it's crawling with skylarks which explode upwards when one approaches, singing joyfully as they steadily rise into the blue of the sky.

By contrast, today we walked north of Golspie, passing below Dunrobin Castle and through its lovely deciduous woodland into the fields beyond. The path follows the track of the old coast road which has probably been in use for millennia, so the remains of the old wall visible running away from the camera towards the gate are interesting. They extend for a couple of hundred yards, running parallel to the sea. Perhaps it formed a boundary between the old road and a field.

 Lesser celandine are just coming into flower in the woodland while....

 ....unusually large and healthy-looking daisies - this flower is about 15mm across - are growing in the sandier soil along the back of the beach. It's not the first time we've noticed that the earliest daisies each year seem larger, nor is uncommon for the petals to be tinged with with delicate pink.

This little bird made our day. It's a grey wagtail and, although it is resident in the UK throughout the year, it seems to disappear from more northern areas in winter, leaving the pied wagtail to take care of things until the weather warms up.