Sand Martins

The Scots word dreich perfectly describes today's dismal weather, as it did yesterday's and, according to the forecast, will continue to describe the next three days. It's an occupational hazard of life in Highland Scotland. I recall, when living on the west coast, enduring a week or more of this, on one occasion when we had a visitor from England who, very politely at the end of his week's stay, swore he would never return to this damp country. It was so sad because there is always a payback, a day whose perfect skies, faultlessly clear air, light winds and warm sunshine more than makes up for a week of dreichness.

The trick is never to let the dreich bit win. So we walked for half a mile along the beach this morning, finding that the recent northeasterlies have removed swathes of recently-returned sand and seeing not a single shore bird until, upon our return to the ramp to the concrete 'promenade', a pair of oystercatchers flew past.

Being in no hurry we walked the length of Golspie's front, the path at its northern end leading us to....

....the pool at the mouth of the Golspie Burn where we saw the goosander yesterday, to find him gone but its surface busy with a mass of martins, swooping low over the water, calling to each other in excitement, perhaps at a feast of insects which we could not see, all very disconcerting for the three mallard trying to share the pool. 

There must have been upward of thirty of them, all sand martins, far more than we've ever seen before at one time. Perhaps they're on their way north to their summer homes but maybe they're all local ones and, when we return the little sand quarry on the golf course, we'll find them busy excavating their nest holes.

Their joy, their excitement, their energy was enough to brighten any dreich day.