Midwinter

It's been some time since we last visited Littleferry so we drove there today to celebrate the solstice. Almost as soon as we arrived, the sun broke through the clouds and, low as it was, set about warming both our bodies and our hearts.

The tide was just past high, the outer pool at the mouth of Loch Fleet as full as we'd ever seen it, but what struck us was how bereft of wildlife it was. A couple of eider were visible but none of the usual rafts of them at sea off the mouth of the loch.

Over the last few weeks, the prevailing northeast to east wind has enabled to sea to remove the normal, wide beach leaving the waves free to erode the dunes. We've seen erosion like this before along this section of coast but not as severe as this.

At the one point where the sea hadn't quite reached the dunes we found the almost untouched remains of a dolphin which had obviously been there for some time. Otherwise, the beach was as lacking in life as the loch, with only a few gulls and a small flock of passing oystercatchers to interest us.

If the mouth of Loch Fleet was empty when we arrived, by the time we left the exposed shingle bank was crowded with oystercatchers, with a further large flock on the south side of the channel. I would guess at there being around 200 birds altogether but, other than the same small group of eider, not another shore bird was visible. 

As we left the beach we came across this oystercatcher which, rather than take off at our approach, ran away along the sand. Its unusual behaviour was easily explained: it had a broken wing.

On the positive side, although there are now warning notices about bird flu at the car parks we only found one dead bird along the shore.