Last Walk of 2021

It's a wee bit depressing when the last walk of 2021, at Littleferry with the tide just beginning to fall, found the beach deserted of wildlife but with far too much in the way of....

....'deadlife', including this guillemot - the most common of the divers to find washed up - and....

....two seals, this one which looks like a juvenile, and a much smaller one, both already subject to the attentions of the local crows. However, just off the beach and in the run of water rushing out of Loch Fleet we saw....

....plenty of live and inquisitive seals and, as the beach became exposed....

....a small flock of oystercatchers.

On the main section of the loch we watched a flock of some fifty widgeon swimming with a couple of mallard, and small groups of shelduck. A few cormorants, a handful of eider, and some gulls completed an unimpressive and quite worryingly low tally of birds, and left one with the hope that 2022 will see a recovery in local wildlife numbers.

'Absent Friends'

This year, as we do every year, when we sat at our Christmas lunch, we stopped for a few moments to toast 'Absent Friends'. It's a tradition which goes back to Christmases at my parents', and it's a catch-all phrase because, for me, it has always also included absent family.

However, as this year ends, I have been thinking how fortunate I am that I remain in touch with so many of the friends I had when I was a small boy and teenager in Mombasa, of whom two are pictured at the Swimming Club along with my brother, left. It's remarkable because all of those Kenya friends have wandered the world yet somehow we have never lost touch.

Sadly, a few have died, but whether I remember the living or the dead, it isn't as an adult that they come to mind but as I knew them when we were all young some sixty or more years ago.

Harriet's Fungi

It's getting towards the time of year when excitement on our walks is more difficult to find as short days, frosts and rain discourage wildlife, to the extent that, on a walk through Dunrobin Woods this morning, a piece of satsuma rind was the most remarkable find until, that is, we approached....

....Harriet's statue, around which, in the past, we have found some good fungi. It isn't unusual to have 'hot spots' which seem to suit fungi - I can think of several others - but what we found today surpassed all expectations, starting....

....with several little explosions of hair ice and....

....what is either white coral or candlesnuff fungus. But these were the mere hors d'oeuvres, for within a radius of ten metres of the statue we came across....

....green fungi and....

....orange fungi and....

....several miniature gardens of mixed fungi.

This cornucopia of species was growing on a number of stumps and logs like this, of one particular tree species, one which was obviously felled and left to rot some time ago. Finding so many may also have been influenced by my expectation that this spot was a good one, so I looked more closely than elsewhere.

"Leave Nothing but Footprints"

I first came across the exhortation, “Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints!” when we travelled in Namibia, a striking land where someone had thought that it might help dissuade tourists from taking home with them some of the increasingly scarce riches of the country, such as mineral specimens.

The saying is ascribed to Chief Si'ahl (1780-1866), a leading figure among the Suquamish and Duwamish Native Americans. The city of Seattle in Washington state was named for him in tribute to his efforts to forge a positive relationship between his peoples and the white immigrant settlers, and for his fight for land rights for Native Americans.

I don't know the context in which the chief coined the phrase, and I liked its relevance in the Namibian setting, but it rings few bells with me now. I have memories in abundance but they will soon be forgotten, and I'm increasingly aware that the tides of time will quickly wash away the traces of my footprints.

Except.... perhaps the footprints I will leave behind are the footprints of my genes.

Deserted

We walked through the village on Christmas Day, the last part along what is usually the very busy A9, to meet not a soul and see only one car; as if the whole population was at home, turned in upon itself, even though, outside, a bright sun shone in a cloudless sky. Nor....

....was it any different along the front when we walked it today, except that the sun was hidden behind high cumulus. As if in response, the lower beach was busy with cormorants, waders and gulls, the wildlife exploiting the absence of humans and their intrusive dogs.

It was disconcerting to see the place so deserted of humans, and to be reminded that, if such were to happen on a permanent basis, the wildlife, like an incoming tide, would quickly move in to fill the vacuum.

Ferry Woods

One of the pleasures of driving out along the Littleferry road to the south of Golspie is the variety of walks that are available from it. One of my favourites is this one, parking just short of Littleferry itself and then walking through Ferry Wood to the beach followed by a....

....brisk walk along sands which are often almost deserted to the....

....mouth of Loch Fleet. One can then return along the links but an alternative is to cut across them and plunge back into Ferry Wood. The next section, along the edge of the fields of a small, well-kept farm, is through woodland which has seen several phases of planting.

The older trees, randomly scattered and mainly Scots pines, seem to occupy the many and rather mysterious mounds which are a feature of the woods, while....

....much more densely packed, younger, plantation conifers fill the gaps between them.

The dark, silent trees, and the masses of moss, lichen and fungi, suggest that this is woodland which is ancient and has a story to tell, but one which is buried in the mists of time. If only one could strip back the dense layers of mosses and heathers that cover the ground, perhaps one could see this past a little more clearly.

Christmas Wishes

 

Brussel Sprouts

For years I've grown Brussel sprouts with the hope and intention of having them with Christmas lunch, and have never been successful but this year, even though we only managed to bring six plants to full maturity at the right time....

....we had a crop which experienced a hard frost - which, apparently, is very important - and produced enough sprouts.....

....to feed a family of six. I am a very happy man.

Small Bird News

We now have no less than 22 feeders out in the garden so we really should be attracting a goodly number of birds but what we're finding is that, while there are plenty coming in to the garden, the range of species has been reduced - so, still no greenfinches, siskins or goldfinches, and certainly no sign of anything exotic like a blackcap. The most numerous bird is probably still the house sparrow, though its numbers are drastically reduced from last year, but the chaffinch is catching up. We notice that the males are very boldly coloured, some with quite large white patches on their wings. 

I'm happy to report that the blue tits are doing well.  One recent lunchtime we managed to count no less than seven all at one time in the back garden. The one pictured may have something wrong with its right eye.

In all the other gardens we've had, coal tits were a rarity but now we're seeing almost as many coal tits as blue tits, probably attracted by the generous amounts of sunflower seeds in feeders which are designed to be 'Tits Only!'.

By comparison, we continue to see relatively few great tits, though when they do arrive, usually singly, the other tits are very wary of them.

This is the cheekiest bird in the garden, a male blackbird who, when I go out to feed the birds first thing in the morning, almost assaults me in his hurry to get at the seed. This picture was taken using my iPhone, from a range of about 18".

At one time we thought we only had one robin in the garden but we now know there are at least three. This one is top robin, a very aggressive individual who....

....is seen here in a confrontation with one of his robins rivals.  However, it's not only the other robins which he chases: the dunnocks, sparrows and chaffinches all get the run-around.

The jackdaws continue to be a nuisance.  At any time I am only one step ahead of them in maintaining the feeders so they can't get at them. The other day one of them discovered how to dislodge a 'Tits Only!' sunflower seed feeder and ate its contents.

An Evening Walk

By the time we were ready for our walk today the temperature was falling from a miserable lunchtime maximum of 1.2C, which felt even more raw by the dampness in the atmosphere and a persistent low cloud cover, so we were only out for an hour, along the shore towards Dunrobin Castle. The short day was already drawing to a gloomy close so looking for otters was fairly hopeless but the walk was made worthwhile when....

..

....we put up a group of no less than fourteen curlews from amongst the seaweed-encrusted rocks exposed by the falling tide. Curlews are on the 'Birds of Conservation Concern - 5' red list so we obviously have more than our fair share of this wader with its haunting call.

Red Coral

I apologise for this picture because I've used it before - link here - but every time I look at it I am reminded that Maziwi in Tanzania is about as close to paradise on Earth as one can imagine. It returns to memory because one of the many things I was very excited to find on this beach, in amongst an abundance of shells and sea urchin spines, was....

....these wave-broken fragments of red coral. I collected several different shades for the purpose of this photograph and returned them in due course to the beach because the island is a national nature reserve, but the reason I wanted to record them is that....

....my mother had a necklace made out of 1cm pieces of red coral, each with a small hole bored into it. She had it in Zanzibar, some eighty years ago, but later, after she returned to England, it broke, and I remember her saying that she ought to re-string it - so it was obviously precious to her, perhaps because of the memories it held.

She never repaired it but she kept the pieces and I, in my turn, have kept them, knowing there is a story behind them which I will never know.

A Welcome Return

This is a picture taken in the gloom of today's winter morning showing the far side of the ford that crosses the Golspie Burn below our house and part of the retaining wall which supports the footbridge which we use to cross it. You may have to hunt for it but, not twenty metres from where we stood in the middle of the bridge there is....

....a dipper, a bird about the size of a blackbird which specialises in hunting underwater for its prey of larvae and other small aquatic invertebrates, which is one reason why....

....it's so difficult to spot.

This one worked its way nearer and nearer to us, giving me every opportunity to take some superb pictures; but the wall was in deep shadow and, however much I adjusted the settings on the camera, I simply could not get a good picture.

The pictures really don't matter. What does is that we have seen a bird which we last spotted back in September, a relatively rare bird - it's on the recent 'Birds of Conservation Concern - 5' in the Amber category - whose welcome presence indicates that the water of the burn is clean.

Otters - Nearly

As we walked the coast path towards Dunrobin Castle this morning we were told that two otters were playing on the foreshore not a hundred metres away but by the time we reached the spot they had, as otters do, disappeared.  We were joined by several other people who had heard the news but....

....even if the otters were still there the seaweed-covered boulders made spotting them very difficult - in this picture there's a turnstone, if you can find it.

Most of the occupants of the shore seemed asleep, like these three of about a dozen curlews standing one-legged on rocks as the tide rose around them, as were....

....the few redshanks and....

....these oystercatchers, which had two pied crows in close attendance.

The local shoreline has never seemed to us an ideal place for otters, with too many people and too many dogs, but we are continually being told that they're there.  For us therefore, it's just a matter of time, patience, and a bit of luck.