More Snow

Before sunrise we could see that the Cefas Endeavour, which has been anchored out in the Firth since Sunday - see earlier post here - had been joined by another ship, possibly the one we saw on Sunday and couldn't identify as this one also did not show on the AIS/MT website. I think it's one of the Scottish Fisheries Protection vessels, very likely the Jura.

When the sun finally broke through the low cloud over the sea we could see that the rooftops of the houses below us had a new accumulation of snow, somewhere between one and two inches deep; and when we went out we could see that.... 

....Highland Council's limited fleet of gritters was struggling to clear the roads - this one is usually gritted quite early as it leads to the Council's offices.

One of the joys of a good fall of snow is walking away from human habitation until one comes to the less-frequented areas, listening to the crunch, crunch of each step and finding....

....the tracks of the animals which have passed since the last snow fell, some easy to identify - like this one, which is a rabbit - and some....

....much more difficult. These tiny tracks may be a stoat.

I was enjoying the scenery and the quiet when I was passed by a young man who asked whether this track would take him up to the summit of Beinn Bhraggie. I told him it would but warned him that the last section, up a steep and very rough path, would be very difficult in these conditions.

The Year's First Snow

I spent most of Thursday lunchtime sitting on this veranda in the sun, watching bumblebees visit the verbena, which is still in boisterous flower, and enjoying a leisurely lunch - not expecting the extent to which the temperature would plummet over the weekend, and the northwesterly wind which would bring us the first light snowshowers of the coming winter.

Snow is very pretty when it first falls, particularly when the sun shines low across it, but struggling into several layers of clothing to walk down to the village shops brings home the realities of winter life, not least the need to....

....wear our boots into which we've screwed metal studs to give us some grip on icy pavements.

I've always maintained that humankind was never designed for life in high latitudes, that we are a savanna animal which used beaches to expand around the Earth, and that we should have confined that expansion to the warm places, like this gentle beach in Tanzania.

There's so much in this picture which I love. The man riding his bicycle along the bottom of the beach where the sand is hard. The ngalowa fishing boats anchored just offshore. The fisherfolk's houses nestling in the shadowed shade of coconut palm and casuarina. The high tide lines along the beach which I once walked each morning to see what had been washed ashore overnight. The blue skies and - though you can't see them - the light breeze and balmy temperatures.

I'd love to go back, if only for one more time.

Three Ships in the Firth

I've been around ships all my life - in fact, one of the most important events of my early existence was that the kitten I was given at the age of about three was the son of the ship's cat on the Clan MacKeller - so one of the joys of living in Kilchoan, looking out across the Sound of Mull, was the wealth of ships of all sorts that sailed past.

By comparison, where we now live, despite its panoramic view out across the North Sea, is very limited in sightings of ships so....

....I am always quite excited when a ship does appear, as this one did yesterday evening. A quick check on the AIS/MT website revealed that she was the Cefas Endeavour, a UK-registered fisheries research vessel operated by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), a British government agency. She's based in Lowestoft and was built in Scotland, at the Ferguson shipyard on the Clyde.

It was good to see her but the morning was made even more remarkable when two other ships emerged with the dawn light. On the left is a ship I'd seen before, the Esvagt Alba, but the one on the horizon remains a mystery - she was not marked on the AIS/MT map.

The Esvagt Alba left first, the Cefas Endeavour seemingly in no hurry to move, still being at anchor at ten this morning.

A Selection of Fungi

It's been a poor year here for fungi so the occasional 'special' has been very welcome - up to a point, that point being my aversion to spending hours trying to identify them. The best I can do with this one, found on the banks of Loch Lochy, is that it's a bracket, a polypore, possibly a birch polypore.

This little collection looks like one of the amanitas, a family which includes fly agaric and the panthercap. To get a better identification I would have had to look at their stems but the fungi were high up on an inaccessible bank.

It's a pleasure when, out for a walk, one stumbles across something which has such rich colour. I have no idea what it is, other than it's a gill, but I'm grateful to it for cheering up an otherwise dull walk.

On the subject of cheering up, this one wins the prize. It was found in a Scots pine plantation, all by itself, happily growing on pine needles - but Mrs MW had passed the spot only two days before, and noticed nothing, so this is a fast grower.

It's a pore of some sort, a bolete, perhaps a bay bolete, the 'bay' referring to its colour rather than a geographical feature.

What is interesting is the strange growth to the upper right in this picture. The only explanation I can think of is that the fungus had to grow round a stick which has subsequently broken away.

A Snowy Forecast

This was the view from our balcony at a quarter to eight this morning looking out across the Moray Firth, a classic 'red sky warning' for those shepherds who don't have the internet. And it looks as if it's right, because while by ten this morning it was warm enough for me to sit on one of my benches and watch the traffic hurtle down the A9, that is all set to change....

....the weather getting colder and colder from lunch time today, so by Tuesday lunchtime we're forecast a maximum of 3C with the wind round in the north bringing snow showers from the Arctic into our part of Scotland.

As if to ensure that the point had been well made, this morning's sunrise process went on for some time - the picture above was taken at ten to eight, the sun finally breaking the horizon....

....at a quarter past eight.

It really has been a remarkably warm November, so I suppose we now have to pay for it.

Molehill with a View

I remember as a boy at my prep school, Glengorse, very much disapproving of one of the jobs the school groundsman had to do - trap the moles whose molehills spoiled the extensive ornamental lawns round the main buildings. This he did with rather vicious steel spring traps. On the other hand, I did approve of the fact that he kept his victims' skins and made them into waistcoats.

The molehill in this picture has just appeared in an area of strimmed grass by the road up to the Council offices, and it intrigues me, because, as far as I can see, there are no other molehills in the area, so the mole who made it must have travelled some distance with his very poor eyesight and short legs to find a....

....new territory.

He's chosen his new home well, for it has a fine view out across the A9 and the Inverness to Wick railway to the Moray Firth, much the same view as we have.

I do hope he's happy in his new home, and that no-one from the Council comes after him with a steel mole trap.

Leaves

For the last few days we've been enjoying some of the UK's best weather, clear days of sunshine followed by cool, starry nights, with only occasional cloudy spells - inevitably some when an aurora is visible! Most of the leaves of the deciduous trees have now fallen, accumulating....

....in brittle piles along the paths and roadsides, in places to some depth. I'm not too old to enjoy doing what I well remember from when I was a schoolboy - deliberately wading through them, kicking the leaves aside, enjoying both the feel of it and the sound.

With the branches now much barer it's easier to see the birds. This, if you can find it, is a tree creeper, a bird which must win first prize for camouflage. I was fortunate to see it, and able to spend a few minutes as it....

 ....worked its way up a Scot's pine.

In the sunshine it's warm enough for me to enjoy my favourite pastime, sitting on a bench watching the world go by. I consider this to be one of the few perks of being old, though it is a bit depressing when, after having sat on this bench overlooking the A9 for almost half an hour, I realised I hadn't seen a single bird in the uncut areas between the paths and the road, even though there were masses of seeds available from a variety of plants.

A Damp Morning at Loch Fleet

The falling tide at the mouth of Loch Fleet this morning should have attracted plenty of waders but all we saw was a....

....single curlew, irritated by our approach, and, on the far side of the channel, a line of cormorants drying and preening themselves. 

We walked northeast along the beach which borders the National Nature Reserve, again seeing very little except discarded mollusc shells and balls of weed. The days when we would find dead fish and rays, jellyfish and starfish, seem to be over. And it wasn't much better when we returned to the car along one of the many paths that criss-cross the links, where all we could find was....

....a few fungi - blackening wax caps are doing well - and the last of....

....summer's flowers, including this lonely Scottish bluebell.

Aurora and the Rut

This isn't the most memorable of the many auroras I was fortunate enough to witness in our years on Ardnamurchan, most of the event consisting of ghostly sheets of green light weaving low across the seas and islands to the north of the peninsula - until, quite suddenly, these great pillars of red started to appear over Meall Sanna. They were spectacular, yes, but they were made very special when, as if they had triggered a response, a red deer stag started to roar.

It was the rutting season and I well remember the hot, angry sound of the beast, frighteningly close behind me, in stark contrast to the icily silent spectacle playing across the skies in front.

The Blankets

Two blankets form the cover to our spare bed. They don't quite match, and we have a purple spread which would probably look rather better, but I love these two blankets, and I'm so pleased that I see them daily because they remind me of two truly beautiful people who once came into our lives.

The blankets were sent to us soon after we left Rhodesia in 1970. It had been a bitter parting because we had hoped and planned to spend our lives there, and had met and made friends with some dedicated, selfless but fun-loving people, but the country we had come to love was sliding into civil war, and we needed, for health reasons, to be back in the UK.

Bibi Witt knew how devastating the retreat had been for us. She knew we weren't looking forward to life in a cold country, and were soon in a damp, cramped ground floor flat in Bristol into which we would shortly bring our first child, so she sent us these blankets to keep us warm. The blankets, woven by local African women, wouldn't have been that cheap, and the postage must have been horrendous, but she did it out of love.

That was all many years ago yet the times we spent with Bibi and David are still fresh in our memories; and all we can add is a heartfelt 'thank you' to them for being such a rich part of the pattern of our lives.

The Fall of Leaves

Today I walked up the hill into the sunshine of a clear, cool, breathless morning, so still one could hear the brittle leaves falling in the sycamore tree; overlaying this, the birds - robin, wren, goldfinch and siskin - sang against a depth of silence.

I tire quickly now when I walk, particularly on an uphill track like this one. I reckon that I'm only capable of walking half the distance I used to manage a year ago, and my steps are much more slow. This is fine, no-one gets younger, and I am fortunate indeed still to have enough puff to take me a mile or two, far enough to remove me from human noise and give me a few minutes in which to listen to silence and the fall of leaves.

We're forecast another week of this weather.

Late Autumn Wildlife

This is what sunrise looks like at 8am from our bedroom window, a big triple-glazed window which slides open to a veranda on which, sadly, we find....

....the occasional bird which has seen sky reflected in the glass, and collided with it. This wren recovered after about a quarter of an hour but we need to put more decals on the glass to prevent these collisions happening.

In no danger of colliding with anything are these great skeins of high-flying pink-footed geese on their daily migrations from Loch Fleet to the harvested barley fields to the north of us. What we haven't yet seen are the redwing and fieldfare migrants for which....

....this year's terrific berry crop will be very welcome.

If the berry crop is prolific, the same cannot be said for the fungi, which continue to be disappointing. Blackening wax caps, like this one, are one of the few species which seem to be doing well.

There are still wildflowers to be found, like ragwort and campion, and a few insects feeding on them, including this caterpillar and the occasional bee which can still be found enjoying the verbena in our garden.

The squirrels are very busy, and we're seeing them regularly as we walk down Squirrel Alley. If you can see it, this is a young one, possibly one of this year's brood. He didn't like us getting close but, unlike the adults, he didn't head for the forestry but stayed up a tree watching until we left.

Benches

It's a sign of our age that the few outdoor benches that are scattered around the local area are increasingly important to us. Time was when, if we needed a rest, we simply sat on some convenient rock or on a clump of heather. These days, getting that far down and up again is a bit of a challenge.

Our walks are now limited to a maximum of about four kilometres - that's two-and-a-half miles in the old currency - and we usually have a walk of some sort every day of the week.

This bench overlooks the tidal pool at the entrance to Loch Fleet, a good spot for watching eider and merganser and other diving birds, as well as waders on the sand and shingle banks.

There are several other benches in this part of the National Nature Reserve but they are all within a short stagger of the car parks, a reflection of what limited distances most people walk.

These benches are in a small field at Drummuie, on the path which the Council put in which leads from the Council Offices towards the village centre. I suppose it was put in to encourage people to walk to the offices but the few souls we see along the path are, like us, residents in nearby houses.

The right-hand bench looks directly down to the A9 and two bus stops, then across the Inverness to Wick railway line and a field, then the golf course, and finally across the Moray Firth towards Easter Ross. I like sitting there watching the huge variety of traffic that passes along one of Scotland's main trunk roads. As well as traffic following the now over-popular North Coast 500 route, it carries everything bound for Sutherland, Caithness and the Orkneys.

This is my favourite bench, and I've written often enough about it. It's on the coast path north from Golspie, just before a walker reaches Dunrobin Castle. It's one of three benches scattered along this half-mile of track but the other two have subsided and tipped backwards, so are much less comfortable.

It's a great bench from which to watch a variety of shore birds and it's from this bench that I had my only two sightings of otters. The rough grassland is good for wildflowers and, thanks to them, a variety of butterflies and other insects. For example, it's one of two places around Golspie where six-spot burnets can be found.

The bench has a plaque on it, and somebody maintains it once a year. I don't know who the Hagans were, but I am very grateful to them and, presumably, their family for their thoughtfulness for I, too, love this place.

An Eagle or Not

A buzzard wheeled high above us today as we set off up the track into the coniferous plantation, following  it upwards....

....through the gate which leads out onto open moorland now planted, and soon to disappear under, yet more coniferous woodland.

We walked on beyond the gate, with....

....the view across Loch Fleet to our left and....

....the ridge that rises to the heights of Beinn Bhraggie to our right, when Mrs MW spotted....

....a raptor flying low and fast, quickly disappearing beyond the ridge line.

In the short few seconds during which the bird was visible it was difficult to determine whether it was another buzzard or an eagle. We concluded that it was an eagle on the grounds that it had a very wide wingspan, that it was flying over open moorland while the local buzzards prefer mature woodland, and that the one flap of its wings which we observed was very slow compared to a buzzard's flap. This last is, in our experience, one of the best ways of identifying an eagle, thoughts it's even easier if there is something to scale it against - such as a gull harassing it.

We'll never know whether it was an eagle or not but it would have been so good to have determined that it was, as we've yet to have a positive sighting of an eagle anywhere in Golspie or its immediate surrounds.