Golspie's south beach has changed since we last walked it, but not in an expected way after several weeks of calm weather. Much of the sand has gone, and there is far more seaweed, in amongst which....
....we found this 4"-long fish, perhaps a small ling, which, although still alive, had a nasty wound.
Small flights of eider kept coming along the shore from the direction of Loch Fleet, and then going back again, as if communal exercise was the order of the day.
With the tide rising we walked homewards along the links at the back of the beach, where masses of wildflowers are beginning to appear. These wild pansies carpeted the ground in places....
....but limited their dominant colour combinations to lilac, mauve and white; it's possible have all-white or all-yellow petals, or combinations with them.
I dread finding an interesting caterpillar as they present the same problems, though not on as large a scale, as wildflowers. After some searching under 'black and white hairy caterpillar' I identified it as the caterpillar of the dark tussock moth. The UKMoths website says of it, "Primarily a moorland and coastal species, inhabiting heathland, sand-hills and shingle beaches, it is distributed in southern England, parts of northern England and central Scotland. It also occurs in parts of Ireland." So it shouldn't have been here.
As we approached the village along the golf course we checked on the sand martins' apartments, to find that most of their nesting holes, which had been under the white post, had collapsed but that they had rebuilt further to the left.
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