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.
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