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?
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....
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