Orchid Site 6

A surprise find on our walk today has cheered what is otherwise a dreich day. Squelching along the path through the woodland in the Golspie Burn's glen, in one of the small clearings we spotted....

....an orchid. While it resembles the heath spotted we found in the Beinn Bhraggie woods (orchid site 3, link here) it's almost certainly a common spotted, which has a much more pronounced 'tooth' on the lower 'lip' of the flower.

At a rough estimate there are twenty of them within a few metres of each other, ranging from slightly darker in the previous photo to this much paler specimen.

To survive in this crowded environment they've had to grow fast and tall - I think this is the tallest orchid I've ever seen though an orchid website states that they can reach 70cm. Visible in this picture are the typical spotted leaves.

We searched the length of the glen for more, without success. It does seem as if the Golspie area has a good selection of orchid species but at remarkably few sites.

An Isolated Orchid

This isn't the environment in which one would expect to find the delicate beauty of wild orchids, just a few metres back from an exposed beach but if you look carefully at bottom right of the picture....

....there's an orchid growing in the protection of the log.

We searched all round and for some tens of metres up and down the back of the beach, without finding another, yet this one, judging by its size and the development of its flowers, has been in bloom for some days. I would love to know how this plant got itself here.

I have the usual trouble in identifying it but I'll go for a northern marsh orchid - a very lonely one.

Burnet Moths

We had noticed the other day, when walking along the path beside the sea where we found the duckling, that what appeared to be a large bee flying fast and low above the meadow grasses seemed to have a very un-bee-like bright red coloration and suspected that it might be a burnet moth. However, it wasn't until yesterday that....

....I managed to get a photograph of one. Sadly, the opportunity was brief and the burnet insisted on hanging upside down, which made identification, which is largely based on wing spots, impossible.

However, later in the walk, in increasingly breezy and cloudy conditions, we came across one which looked as if it had crash-landed.

While it was still very much alive it didn't, or couldn't, fly away so I gently picked it up.

At first sight it appears to be a five-spot burnet but this only occurs in England and Wales. It could be the narrow-bordered five-spot, which does extend into Scotland, but not this far north, and it's not the slender scotch burnet which is only found on the west coast on and around Mull.

One possibility is that it's the scotch burnet but this is described as occurring in mountainous areas and appears to be very rare; further, its rear spot is small. So it's most likely that this is a much more common six-spot with the rear two spots fused, something which isn't unusual. It's a bit disappointing as I had hoped for a new species - we have seen six-spot burnets in both Ardnamurchan and Felixstowe - but.... well, it's always good to see an old friend.

A Lost Duckling

While returning from our afternoon walk along the ancient track between Dunrobin Castle and Golspie, which runs close to the beach, we spotted what we took to be....

....a blackbird scurrying along the path in front of us.

Only when it stopped and turned did we realise that it was a small duckling, possibly from one of the mallard families which frequent the mouth of the Golspie Burn, which the track crosses. Yet the little thing was half a mile from the burn.

Having started by running away from us it suddenly decided to come towards us, only stopping when it was at our feet.

It was almost as if it was begging us to help it find its mum and dad but there was no sign of any adults around. We know better, from grim experience, than to take a wild animal, however cute, home with us, as we did while living at Matenderere - link here. Although that duckling was wonderfully cared for, it did not survive.

So, sadly, we left it on the path, cheeping pathetically, and hope that a parent finds it.

Light Pillars

In early March of this year our son in Edmonton, Alberta, sent us this picture of a light pillar rising above an oil refinery near his house. I had never seen anything like it until....

....last night, at 10.20, as the sun was setting into the northwest.

According to Wikipedia, 'The effect is created by the reflection of light from tiny ice crystals that are suspended in the atmosphere or that comprise high-altitude clouds (e.g. cirrostratus or cirrus clouds).' The entry continues, 'If the light comes from the sun (usually when it is near or even below the horizon), the phenomenon is called a sun pillar or solar pillar.'

Whatever it is, and whatever it may be called, for a few brief moments it was spectacular.

Reluctant Damselflies

Golspie's old skating pond, late afternoon, and surely there must be dragon- and/or damselflies in residence by this time in the year?

Yep, but they're being a bit shy about it, either hiding behind an oak leaf or....

....popping out and back so fast there isn't a hope of a decent picture, and....

....when they do land they're hull-down behind a log or....

....hull-down behind a rock or....

....hiding in the fold of a leaf or....

....finally willing to show themselves for identification as, I think, large red damselflies though, to be honest, they're really very small.

An Overabudance of House Sparrows

Feeding the birds is costing a fortune - sorry, I'll start that again. Feeding the sparrows is costing a fortune. Our liberal deployment of bird feeders - on present count there are ten - has resulted in the sparrows who first joined us back in March producing a large brood, but now they're working their way through the next one, and it's only June!

We're having to buy fat balls in a container of fifty and the sparrows are getting through them at three or four a day. Worse, the other birds aren't getting a look in. The greenfinches don't visit any more, we haven't seen the siskin since its one visit, the goldfinches stay in the neighbouring field, the coal tits are a distant memory, and the robins and dunnocks are overwhelmed. So the game with feeders now is to invent models which keep the sparrows out. The one above was a first try, designed so the tits could get in from underneath and have....

....all the fat to themselves and their young of which, I'm pleased to report, there are large numbers - though nothing to rival the sparrows.

It took the first sparrow less than 24 hours to solve the problem. The diameter of the outer net cage isn't large enough so he managed to get at the fat from the outside. Back to the drawing board with that one.

Meanwhile, another model has come off the assembly line. It's a peanut feeder designed, again, for the exclusive use of the tits. Made of four inches of plastic basin drain pipe and a small square of 4mm wire mesh, only the tits.... should.... be able to feed from it. It has started well: the first blue tit - one of the young - was on it in no time. We'll see how it goes.

Light at Midnight

This was the view looking due north from Golspie just before midnight last night. The sky wasn't quite light enough to be able to read a book but one could see our surroundings clearly so if, for example, the local roe deer had been feeding in the field beside our house we'd have been able to watch them.

By 4.45am, despite bright sunshine, the world was only just beginning to wake up. A grey heron from the nearby heronry was stalking the field but it was noticeable that, even though the sun was up, there wasn't another bird to be seen or heard. They seem to have very strict hours because by seven the small birds were attacking the peanut feeders.

Despite the bright start the morning turned cloudy with a brisk but warm southerly wind but by three in the afternoon the sun was out again so we walked into the grounds of Dunrobin Castle to check on the orchids along the drive to find that, where there had been five the other day, there is now a magnificent display of about thirty of what look like early marsh orchids - so good that other people were standing admiring it.

One of the other pleasures of the walk was coming across the first common blue butterfly of the year - this is a male. Common they may be but they're also uncommonly pretty.

Young Oystercatchers

Walking along the path that follows the shore at the northeast end of Golspie's seafront we spotted....

...these two fledgling oystercatchers making their way through the seaweed, and watched as....

....they split up, one to go looking for food with Dad, the other....

....with Mum. Later, as we walked back through the town and past Golspie High School's extensive playing fields, we found....

....another, but rather older oystercatcher young, following a parent as they probed for worms.

It amazes us that, in a town where there is a drastic surplus of crows, these little oystercatchers survive, but thank goodness, as otherwise we might not have the pleasure of watching them and hearing their chirpy call through the long months of the coming winter.

Noctilucent Cloud

12.55am BST, or 11.55pm GMT - last night's sky still bright looking NNW from Golspie, with a whisp of noctilucent cloud caught by the sun. By coincidence, yesterday's NASA 'picture of the day' was of noctilucent clouds but rather more spectacular than this one - see the site and an explanation of these clouds here.

Foxgloves

The foxgloves here are just coming in to flower and are therefore at their best, so I took this picture to include on my 'page' of local wildflowers - here - and also a close-up....

....to show detail of both flowers and leaves, but a few days later....

....I took another photograph of this foxglove - for reasons I can't recall and which probably weren't very logical anyway - and noticed that both the colour shade and the pattern arrangement on the interior of the flowers were slightly different from the first, so....

....I began taking pictures of other specimens which were very different but also....

....those where the flowers hung in a different way. Then, of course, there were those whose flowers....

....were white.

I hadn't appreciated this species had such variety. Suddenly, I'm interested in foxgloves.

Wildflower Walk

The lane that leads up from our house to Golspie Tower and then on into the Beinn Bhraggie woods has proved a treasure-trove of wildflowers and continued this morning with....

....this stunning flower, blood-drop emlets, which, as one might guess from its vivid colours, isn't native but has invaded us from from more exotic climes, specifically Chile. No distance on we found....

....orange hawkweed, a wildflower which, despite its colours, is native to Scotland.

We diverted from our route briefly to check on the five heath spotted orchids we found the other day but, on continuing a few steps further down the muddy track....

....stumbled upon the biggest hoard of this species ever, perhaps a hundred or more crowding a grassy bank - yet a few metres further on there was not an orchid to be seen.

We walked steadily up through the woodland until we came out onto the open moor, noticing how the variety of wildflowers dropped off, the land dominated by grasses....

....and heathers just coming into bloom, interspersed with the little yellow tormentil flowers and bog cotton.

Then, on our way down, to make my day, we come across these large red damselflies 'in tandem'.