The beach at Littleferry this morning was even more deserted than usual, not only of humans but also, sadly, of wildlife. Of shore birds we saw two redshanks and three oystercatchers, a handful of sandwich terns, a cormorant, and a few other gulls; and there was nothing of any note washed up along the tideline. Happily, there was more to interest us....
....on the links at the back of the beach where the ling is now in full bloom. It's a flower I associate with the beginning of the end of summer, a flower which, in its masses, paints the Highland hills in the most glorious purples.
Its flowering coincides with that of the....
....autumn gentian, a white variety which occurs in patches on the links but which has struggled in the last couple of years, with many of the plants appearing to....
....die as they are flowering. We speculate that this may simply be that they're not getting enough rain.
These links are also home to a few of the more usual purple-coloured gentian but there was no sign of them today.
I remember on our first visit to these links in 2019 finding a good number of this fungus, the blackening waxcap, which starts a bright yellow and then morphs through....
....orange and red to brown and finally to black. Today there were just half-a-dozen of them huddled together in one place on the links.
Finally, the butterflies were as scarce as ever, the only ones on the wing being a few common blues and a couple of small heaths.
The beach at Littleferry this morning was even more deserted than usual, not only of humans but also, sadly, of wildlife. Of shore birds we saw two redshanks and three oystercatchers, a handful of sandwich terns, a cormorant, and a few other gulls; and there was nothing of any note washed up along the tideline. Happily, there was more to interest us....
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