A dreich dee today so we walked somewhere suitably damp - the glen cut by the Golspie Burn, called, rather grandly in the tourist brochures, the Big Glen. In a distance of half a mile the burn drops through a series of small rapids, the path crossing it in several places by well-maintained footbridges from which there are good 'photo opportunities'.
This is the highlight of the walk, an impressive fall almost at the top of the glen.
It's a long time since we last walked this path and I can understand why: as well as being damp, which it is even on a non-dreich day, it's dark and enclosed and, in the season, busy with recreational walkers - though today we saw not a soul.
The recent gales have brought down several trees though those which have blocked the paths have already been cleared by the small group of volunteers who nobly look after the glen.
The highlights of our walk were fungi, two rather fine brackets. This one may be turkeytail -
Trametes versicolor and....
....this one might, just might be a hairy curtain crust,
Stereum hirsutum.
We've noticed that, since the weather has turned cold, the fungi which live on rotten wood, as these two do, are dominant over other fungi, though it may just be that the 'other fungi' are more difficult to spot because they are lost under a mass of rotting leaf litter.
Lovely photographs, Jon. The moss has rejuvinated after the dryness of the summer and everything looks clean and fresh. What do you think are the linear-leafed plants growing on the bank of the top picture and behind the log in the last picture?
ReplyDeleteNot sure what they are, Derryck. Some may be wild garlic but there's another plant in the glen which I've failed to identify. Incidentally, referring to a previous comment, the tern in Tanzania may be a roseate tern but not of the population which we see here. Jon
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