Low Tide

Other than the two days a week when we volunteer at the Alzheimer shop in Golspie, we usually walk in the mornings, perhaps two to three miles, and where we go is partly determined by the weather and the state of the tide. For example, we can only get down from the end of the promenade onto Golspie's south beach during about a week each lunar month as the time of low tide moves through the morning. So today, with low tide at 07.59, light westerlies, blue skies, and only the occasional heavy shower, that is where we headed.

As usual there was hardly another soul on the beach, and even looking at the tracks of those who had already come and gone, I doubt whether the beach saw twenty people before the tide ran in to cover it. Nor did we see much of interest along the beach: the only shore birds were a dozen oystercatchers which we disturbed feeding on the tide line.

Despite an air temperature of 4C, the sun was gloriously warm on our faces as we walked south in the direction of Littleferry but our time on the beach was limited by....

....the way it narrows as it approaches Golspie and the point where a concrete ramp - just beyond the dog-walker - is the only access from the promenade.

As we walked back - and reached the ramp almost at the same moment as the incoming tide - we searched for birds out at sea, finding a couple of cormorants, a small raft of eider, what may have been a merganser, and....
 

....these two. They're long-tailed ducks, the first we've seen this winter. Last January - see post here - we saw small flocks of them, the males at that time in their black-and-white mating finery and long tails, and very actively quarrelling over the drabber females.