April Showers

The view out of the bedroom window this morning gave us good notice of the sort of day in prospect - cool, with occasional sunny intervals and sudden, rather chill showers - more like April than mid-May but ideal, perhaps, for....

....a brisk walk along an almost deserted beach to the south of Golspie, with the tide falling and a chance to check on the various waders' nests along the upper beach.

The first ringed plovers' nest, with the single egg, has disappeared, but a parent was on duty at the second, with the four eggs, which is a good sign. However, there was also a worried plover lurking at the spot where we saw the three birds courting on Wednesday, so there is a good chance that there's a nest there now.

The oystercatchers were on duty, with one of them on the nest - it's just visible at the very top of the beach. However, what is worrying for all three nests is the way the sea is removing sand from the beach at the moment. The sand seems to come and go, with the beach losing sand if the wind is onshore, and gaining it if the wind is offshore.

We walked back along the links, finding this exceptionally hairy caterpillar within yards of where we found the dark tussock moth caterpillar last Friday - see post here. I think it's the caterpillar of the garden tiger moth, which is a rather spectacular moth - link here - described as 'not common' in Britain. It's sometimes called the 'woolly bear' caterpillar.

However, the find of the day as far as I was concerned was this dead stalk. I'm fairly certain it's what's left of a frog orchid from last year. There are plenty of them along at Little Ferry but this is the first we've found near Golspie. It was very solitary, so we do hope there are more come July when the frog orchids should be in flower.