A Last Kilchoan Holiday

This is one of the photos in my collection which I look at with deep sadness. It shows my mother on the last trip she made to stay with us in Kilchoan, some time around 1999 when she was 86, when we had relatively recently bought the Ferry Stores and were living in the adjoining house. She's standing at the top of the slipway below the shop with the late evening sun on her face.

She had travelled up by train from Hastings, where she had a flat in the Old Town, crossing London and then catching the Euston to Fort William sleeper train. It was only after she arrived that we began to realise that something was seriously wrong. I remember that one of the symptoms of her mental decline  was her conviction that Balmoral was just up the road in Ormsaigbeg, and her insistence that she should walk up to see the queen. My mother had always been a staunch royalist though for reasons I didn't understand, she called the queen Brenda.

By the end of her stay we were convinced that, although she was quite happy to do it, she could not travel back to Hastings alone. We were extremely busy in the shop but were saved by my Aunt Noel who, by that time, was regularly holidaying in Kilchoan: she offered to accompany her all the way back to Hastings, an offer which we gratefully accepted.

In the coming year we moved her to a care home, from which she 'escaped' on occasion, once being found by the police at Hastings station on her way up to Kilchoan - but it was late in the evening, she was dressed in her pyjamas and a dressing gown, and we weren't expecting her. We quickly moved her into secure accommodation. She never returned to Kilchoan and the only times I saw her during her last few years were on our annual trips down to England when, each time, she could remember less and less and was more and more confused until, on the final occasion I saw her, I don't think she knew who I was.

So I look at the picture and think that this was the last time she was, mostly, herself, the last time we could communicate. She died in 2002 at the age of 89.

The Trouble with Orchids

One of the two entrances to Dunrobin Woods nearest to us is directly off the busy A9 and takes us into a small, overgrown clearing where, in past years, we've found....

....two or three of the fairly standard northern marsh orchids, Dactylorhiza purpurella. However, when we passed through the clearing this morning we counted upward of a dozen orchids, some....

....coloured rather differently from the standard northern marsh. A bit of research on the internet suggests that this paler version is Dactylorhiza purpurella var. albiflora which has what are described as 'white' flowers and is confined to parts of Scotland.

This one, however, is markedly different. It's most likely to be a cross between a 'white', albiflora northern marsh orchid and a close relative in the dactylorhiza group, possibly the common spotted orchid.

The northern marsh is capable of several hybrids, not all of them in its group, and this hybridisation is common in other orchids, which makes identification for people like me both difficult and frustrating. However, thinking about it, I would rather have this rich variety and the frustration which goes with it than just a few, easily recognised, un-hybridisable species.

Farlary Insects

Our walk on Sunday was courtesy of the Farlary crofter who has gone to so much trouble to landscape and open up a good proportion of his land to the general public. He must have planted hundreds of trees while, at the same time, leaving clearings for the wildlife that prefers open space or woodland margins. He has also made a feature of the small quarry that was used to build the tracks and bases for the turbines of the nearby Kilbraur wind farm.

This is typical of the varied habitats he's created, a wood which, in the late months of the year, is full of fungi. However, at this time of year it's the insects which are enjoying the croft, including....

....this tiger beetle.

The dragonflies seem to prefer this sort of environment, often landing on lumps of aggregate so they can bask in the sunshine, like this....

....male common blue.

A walk is always made special by a new find. We'd seen golden-ringed dragonflies before, on Ardnamurchan, and knew that their range included Sutherland, but yesterday we finally found the first here, one which was also willing to stay around long enough to have its picture taken.

The female of this species is Britain's largest dragonfly but I think the one pictured is a male. Happily....

....he wasn't alone, and we ended up seeing at least four of the species.

Our Farlary walk finishes on this stone bench by a small burn, protected from the wind by the banks of the glen. Places like this tend to have associations with the wildlife we've seen in them: in this case a very fine orange-tip butterfly.

On our way home we stopped briefly by the banks of Loch Farlary in the hope of seeing an osprey there again. We were unlucky but a somewhat irritated lapwing did its best to make up for it.

The croft has a cottage to rent - link here.

Guillemot Graveyard

This morning should have been a beautiful morning for a walk along the coast towards Dunrobin Castle but we made the mistake of leaving the footpath and going down to stroll along the beach where....

....we came across the corpses of not one but several guillemots washed up with the seaweed on last night's high tide. Worse....

....we started to find them in the oil-like mess of weed and water just off the beach, still half alive, and others....

....alive on the beach but obviously very sick. We counted a dozen, without looking too hard and, having noticed them from the path on our way back, know that there are many more.

We assumed that they are suffering from the H5N1 bird 'flu outbreak so, when we were home, we rang the DEFRA number 03459 33 55 77 to report them. From a local Facebook site we know that, below the golf course to the south of town, a number of gannets have recently been washed up.

It made for a somewhat miserable walk but, happily, just above the beach and in the lee of a log, we found the same....

....northern marsh orchid that's appeared there the last two years; and we ask the question again: how did a lone orchid find its way here when the nearest of its kin are several hundred metres away?

Farlary Flowers

With the promise of a fine but breezy day today, we took the car about five miles inland this morning, up into Sutherland's rather bleak moorlands, to a crofting township called Farlary, where we can walk easily up the gravel track to the Kilbraur wind farm and then back through one of the crofts where the owner has laid out paths through a mix of habitats.

On the open moorland the first flowers of the heather family are out. This is cross-leaved heath, always the earliest, but bell heather is also starting though not the ling. In the damper patches....

....we found the insectivorous round-leaved sundews, this one just coming into flower, and....

....in the wettest patches, another insect-eater, butterwort. However, as always, the show was stolen by....

....the orchids. This looks like northern marsh but there were only two of these in flower, while....

....some of the damper areas were crowded with heath spotted, the first we've seen this year. Their flowers vary from almost completely white to....

....white with purplish spots through to....

....quite spectacular pinks.

At first sight the Sutherland moors may appear bleak but, if one looks closely, at this time of year they're a paradise of grasses and wildflowers.

Bird Flu

Each time we walk along the beaches up and down the coast from Golspie we are amazed that we encounter so few other humans - which is good in many ways including that this....

....bench, one of only a few along the beach at Littleferry, is usually free for us to sit and ease our aching bones. But the other day we didn't stay long because the remains of a bird, possibly a small goose, was tucked up under one end of it.

These sad corpses are everywhere. Worse, perhaps, we are seeing so few of the ducks and waders which would usually be exploiting the rich sands and muds of Loch Fleet. We see the remains of the larger birds but fear that the corpses of the smaller ones, the ringed plovers, sanderlings, turnstones, dunlins, are probably lost amongst the seaweed along the high-tide line.

The current H5N1 flu outbreak is a slow-burning disaster that will affect our bird life for years.

Seal Pup

On our walk along Littleferry beach yesterday we came across this seal pup. It was slightly over a metre long, and was lying just above the early morning's high-tide line so it seemed logical that it had probably come on to the beach at high tide.

It seemed fine so we left it, assuming that its mother had gone off to enjoy a meal and a little 'me-time'  before returning to collect it when she was ready. I was surprised therefore to read on our local Golspie Facebook site this morning that we should have reported it to the British Divers Marine Life Rescue organisation who monitor young seals. Their website had plenty of sensible suggestions as to what to do and not do in these circumstances but reporting every single seal pup on the beach seemed a bit over-the-top.

We did do one pretty obvious thing that the website recommends. When we came across the only other walkers on the beach, a young couple with four boisterous dogs, we warned them of the pup's location, and we later saw that they had left the beach before they reached it.

Perhaps seal pups are now so precious and, probably, so often disturbed by humans and their dogs that BDMLR prefer to monitor all of them, which is a sad reflection on our times.

Year's Firsts at Littleferry

It's the time of year when, despite the continuing cool weather, everything is rushing to complete the annual cycle in the short weeks we have before the first chills of autumn. So in the forestry at Littleferry, where the foxgloves are particularly fine this year, the first....

....damselflies are out - this is one of only two large reds we found around the edges of Loch Unis. Near them we spotted....

....the first speckled wood which, like the damselflies, was very loath to take off into a cool breeze.

At the edge of the wood, just inland from the links, is a colony of creeping ladies tresses, the first of which are up and in bud, while...

....the first fungi are showing giving me the usual....

....agonies over identification. This may be plums & custard - we've found them near here before - though the colour of the cap is too yellow and this species isn't usually out until July. Happily....

....I'm a little more certain with this: it isn't a fungus but a slime mould, wolf's milk slime.

Out on the links, wandering through masses of wildflowers, we came across....

....the first, tiny, small heath butterflies and...

....feeding on the northern marsh orchids, the first of the day-flying six-spotted burnet moths.

Books, Books, Books

Twice a week we stroll along the seafront to the charity shop where we work which, although it describes itself as the 'Golspie Charity Shop', is run entirely in aid of Alzheimer Scotland. It seems, with our advancing years, a very appropriate charity to work for.

I enjoy the work, not least because it gives me a chance to meet a considerable variety of people. Many are locals, some of whom come in on a fairly regular basis, and some only to offload items which have become surplus to their requirements. Surprisingly, because one would have thought they had better things to do on their visit to Golspie, others are visitors.

The shop is a little like a department store in that it sells a very wide range of goods. The area which I most enjoy is the books which, since Golspie doesn't have a bookshop and only a small public library, attracts a good clientele. The trouble with the books is that far more come in than we can cope with, so I have the sad task of consigning a proportion to the recycling bin. Despite this, the number of books seems to grow and grow, with as many behind the scenes as there are on the shop floor. This morning, as an example, we received around fifty Reader's Digest matching volumes each containing four abridged novels. I have the feeling that the best thing we can hope for is that someone buys them either to look good in a bookcase or, as has recently been suggested, as house wall insulation.

The steady trade in books is an indicator of their continuing appeal, despite the invention of the tablet and other specialised digital book readers. The trade may also be encouraged by the keen prices we charge: all paperback novels are a mere 50p.

Roe and Red Deer

If we're very lucky on one of our daily walks around Golspie's soft countryside we come across one of the roe deer which inhabit its woodlands. They're well used to humans so they don't immediately vanish into the undergrowth: in fact the small group we occasionally see by the road up to Golspie Tower, of which this is one, ignore passing cars and are only surprised when they see a human on foot.

As we age so our walks become increasingly tame, and seeing a gentle roe deer reminds us of the days when, on our much longer and more rugged walks which often took us miles into the Scottish hills, we would suddenly encounter a magnificent beast like this one.

A big red deer stag, out of the rutting season, will often be accompanied by one or more younger stags, as happened here. The advantage of numbers is that it increases the chance of spotting threats like us: our sighting of this king of the hills lasted a few seconds.

Fathers' Day

Today is Fathers' Day, always thought of as a human celebration, but I'm suggesting we should also be thinking of fathers in other animal groups who have every bit as hard a time bringing up their young as we do, like the birds who come in to our garden.

The tits are very active with their families at the moment, one bluetit father having to look after four demanding children, while this male great tit only has one in his charge. The young one is perfectly capable of feeding off the peanut dispenser but, hey!, why go to the trouble when Dad will do it for you?

The garden's dominant male blackbird, despite having had ready access to the masses of food we put out, only seems to have one child in tow, though it's already as big as he is and very demanding indeed.

Most young look cute and appealing but this wren baby looks like the child from hell. His parent was going demented in a nearby bush while he studiously ignored my approach. It was as if he fully expected his Dad to see off the human threat.

So - to all bird fathers, have a happy Fathers' Day!

A Strong Wind

 

While the south of the country bakes we are enjoying a fine but rather cooler day distinguished by a wind which is hammering in off the North Atlantic. The gusts around lunchtime were forecast to top gale force and, while I have no means of measuring them, I'm sure they lived up to the promise.

It very much reminds me of sitting in the back garden of our house in Jamaica when the trades were blowing strongly. Because I worked the 'morning school' I was usually home in time for a slightly late lunch so the garden was well used - in other ways too, for we grew a wealth of fruit and vegetables, including my favourites, mango and pawpaw.

'Robinson Crusoe'

This thick, A4-sized book that sits on the bottom shelf of our bookcase is yet another memento of colonial days long passed. I have no particular recollection of being given it, although....

....my name in my mother's handwriting on the inside of the front cover suggests it wasn't from her as I think she would have given it to me 'with love' yet, if someone had sent her the money to buy it for me, I would have expected her to have acknowledged it. It's an abridged version of the book with....

....plenty of illustrations, both of which suggest it would have been appropriate for someone around the age of nine or ten - so perhaps it was given to me on one of the occasions when I set off from Mombasa on my return to prep school in England.

It's certainly the sort of gung-ho book a ten-year old would have enjoyed back in the 1950s, with descriptions of how Crusoe survived and also of the dreadful moment when....

....he realised he was no longer alone on his island.

I love it as a product of its age, the story of a Britisher surviving against all odds and....

....having rescued, named and civilised him, striking up a warm rapport with 'My Man Friday'. And, oh dear, I do so envy the man his life on 'his' tropical beach.