Littleferry

 We were at Littleferry this morning before ten, in weather which was fairly typical of the last few days, with the cloud almost down to the ground and a thin rain falling. On a rising tide....

....flocks of seabirds were strung along the shore, a mix of oystercatchers and terns in the foreground with larger gulls on the far side of the channel, while small groups of eider were swimming with the tide.

The terns looked like sandwich terns, a close-up showing....

....a mixture of breeding adults with their black heads, characteristic crests and black bills with orange tip, non-breeding adults with some black on their head, and speckled juveniles.

We walked for a mile or so along the beach, meeting only one other group of humans, and returned to the car along the links, where the ling is now in magnificent bloom - all it needed was a dose of sunshine.

We came across masses of white autumn gentians, some of which looked green-leaved and healthy, and were in muted flower while others - the ones I recently described as 'chocolate gentians' - had....

....yellowing leaves and what appeared to be dead flowers. Perhaps the recent weather hasn't suited them.

The orchids are dead, the seabirds are gathering along the sands, the skylarks have fled south, skeins of geese are passing overhead, and the swallows were swooping over Loch Fleet and preparing to follow them. The seasons are changing and increasingly it'll be the turn of the fungi. These ones, in shades of orange through to bright yellow, may be Hygrocybe acutoconica, the persistent waxcap.