Littleferry Beach

It's some time since we took our usual, and favourite walk at Littleferry, through Ferry Wood from the Littleferry Road, then along the beach to the mouth of Loch Fleet, then back to the car via the links and the wood; and a fair bit has changed.

The most noticeable change is to the beach. While there is still plenty of sand there's much less than usual, and this has resulted in the storm waves doing considerable damage to the dunes at the back of the beach.

A much more worrying change is the lack of birds exploiting the tideline along the beach. On the sandy beach we encountered just one black-backed gull, and, amongst the pebbles at the top of the beach....

....a corpse, which we identified as a juvenile gannet.

There were a few more birds at the mouth of the loch. These included about fifty eider just off-shore....

....a couple of dozen oystercatcher working their way through the cobbles that form the lower beach, and a handful of redshanks. In addition, we saw one cormorant, a curlew, and a few common gulls.

Even in the inner basin of the loch there was little to see, despite the miles of mud-flats waiting to be exploited by ducks and waders. The list of species was limited: curlew, oystercatcher, gulls, mallard and a disappointingly few widgeon.

I keep going on about the reduction in the amount of wildlife along the Golspie shores. Today showed no improvement.