Another 'First' for the Year

Yesterday's walk through the forestry gave us just one new 'first' for the year, a vetch which is most likely to be common vetch but may be purple milk-vetch. It doesn't particularly matter except that purple milk-vetch is listed as endangered, mainly through the ploughing up of its preferred habitat, and it would be good to think it's thriving here in Golspie.

This year I do seem to be a bit obsessed with finding the first of every species but it gives me some pleasure to welcome their return. I'm also conscious that the passing of another year leaves me fewer new years in which to enjoy this greeting process so there will come a time when, without realising it, the year's hunt for returning species will turn out to be my last.

If yesterday's walk produced just one new species today's, along the coast path to the north of Golspie, did rather better.

It saw the first definite sighting of swallows. The martins have been here for some days but this swallow, along with a couple of companions, was zooming low across the carefully mown lawns below Dunrobin Castle.

This first was a bit unexpected, the first caterpillar of the year, spotted walking very determinedly along the coast path as if it was heading for John o' Groats. It's the caterpillar of the garden tiger moth.

This is one of the real markers of spring, lady's smock or cuckooflower, named the latter because it tends to appear at about the same time as the cuckoos return. Not that we've heard much of our cuckoos: so far I've heard only one calling, very briefly, as if it was all rather hopeless. 

To me, clover is a quintessential flower of hot summer days. I recall as a small boy plucking its flowers and sucking them for the tiny, sweet taste of its nectar.

The bluebells are out, not in any great numbers yet, but we also have whitebells and pinkbells to enjoy.

And lastly, but not leastly, we found just one small patch of grass sheltering a few of the pretty, delicate flowers of the speedwell. Apparently it gets its name from being a good luck charm for travellers, speeding them upon their way.

So appropriate, then, that it was growing beside the ancient coast path that passes below Dunrobin Castle.