First Cuckoo

We drove to Littleferry today on a rather drier but still drizzly day to find the incoming tide funnelling through the entrance to Loch Fleet, across which swallows and sand and house martins were flying low to pick up small, black, gnat-like insects blown off the rotting seaweed.

The eider are still there in numbers, moving around in groups which gather on the shore and then suddenly set off into the channel, where they dive in unison for a few minutes before returning to the shore to preen their feathers. At some point, presumably, they'll start thinking about nesting.

The gulls and oystercatchers gather in a quite separate group where the sea is flooding across the seaweed and rocks - picture looks across the Dornoch Firth to the lighthouse at Tarbat Ness - but other than these three species and....

....the occasional small wader there was worryingly little to interest along a....

....very barren beach. Last year we found all sorts of things washed up, including skates and rays and dabs, this year there is little, not even many crabs. It's as if the firth is being desertified, the marine life either extinct or moved elsewhere.

As we walked back somewhat dejectedly to the car park we were cheered by the rediscovery of one old friend, the first of the wild pansies which, hopefully, will soon carpet large areas of the links. We also experienced another important rite of spring, the first call of....

....a cuckoo, sitting in the top of a dead tree overlooking the links, much to the consternation of....

....some of the small birds thinking of nesting in the gorse.