Today's morning high tide along a grey, cool and drizzly Golspie beach brought in the usual sad reminders that....
....the H5N1 bird 'flu outbreak is still very much with us. This is a young gull which may have died of other causes but the other two corpses were guillemots, the species which seems to have taken the brunt of the epidemic locally.
Happily there are still seabirds along the shore, including a pair of ringed plovers camouflaged against the seaweed: they need to be as this is prime dog-walking territory. We also saw....
....some of the mallard which inhabit the mouth of the Golspie Burn - it comes into the sea just beyond the low point. Along the rocks on this section we noted something which seems increasingly common, the way that....
....what are considered land birds - wagtails, house sparrows, pipits - are taking to foraging along the tidelines.
Just off the mouth of the burn a lone eider paddled anxiously back and forth. The eider have been nesting inland - we haven't been to visit them this year but last year several pairs were rearing their young along the margins of Loch Fleet - and will shortly start to appear along the coast where they will winter.
Today's morning high tide along a grey, cool and drizzly Golspie beach brought in the usual sad reminders that....
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