Wildlife of the 2025 Year

The bare branches of the winter trees offer no hiding place for the small birds, which made possible this picture of a tiny, shy goldcrest.

Because I don't keep records of wildlife sightings it is difficult for me to estimate whether populations have increased or decreased. However, I can say with some certainty that, with the possible exception of the oystercatchers, the number of shore birds has decreased since last year. This is a curlew against a backdrop of the lighthouse at Tarbat Ness.

2025 will be memorable for an explosion in the number of adders and for a single sighting of....

....a kingfisher near Loch Lunndhaid, a long way north of its normal range.

Early in the year the roe deer were coming close to the houses - this picture was taken from our kitchen window - but by the year's end the deer had almost disappeared.

It's also some time since we saw red deer close to Golspie, the population having been culled to make way for trees.

We don't know what has hit the rabbit population in the fields near us. Early in the year on a typical walk we'd see ten or more within a few hundred metres of our house, some with unusual white markings. Recently they can only be seen in local gardens. By contrast, the red squirrel population has thrived this year, mostly thanks to the support of the home owners who live near the sites where they were re-introduced some years ago.

Some insect populations have faced an almost catastrophic decline. The only butterfly which has done well is the speckled wood, and our carefully selected wildlife-friendly shrubs, such as verbena, michaelmas daisies and buddleia, have done little to draw butterflies into our garden.

Despite having a pond in the middle of it, the one thing we have not managed to attract to our garden are the dragonfly and damselfly populations. This may not have been helped by the pond drying up for most of the summer.

2025 was a relatively good year for fungi, which, as usual, brought with them the agonies of whether or not to try to identify them. In general, I've given up on identification, freeing myself for the simple enjoyment of their variety and beauty.

The one group which don't seem to have been in decline are the local wildflowers and, of all of them, the orchids continue to give the greatest pleasure. This is a common spotted which, logically enough, is the rarest of the five species we've found here.

Some wildlife remains elusive. It is years since we saw a hedgehog or a fox and, despite leaving signs of their presence, we have yet to see a pine marten. We've had distant views of eagles but we would love to have a close encounter with one of the sea eagles which are reputed to have moved into the area.

The wildlife is precious to us. Let us hope that 2026 sees some of the more threatened species making a come-back.

The Colours of Sunset

The old saying, "Red sky at night, shepherd's delight....," may not hold true for the next twenty-four hours as the forecast here is for grey skies tomorrow and, over the next ten days, temperatures dropping below zero and a good chance of gales and drifting snow.

This sunset reminded me of similar African sunsets, like....

....this one, taken on the east coast of Zanzibar and of....

....this one, in the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania. Both of those fulfilled their promise of warm, dry days with light winds.

Would that I could see another African sunset.

Low Tide

With the tide low at midday and the forecast set for sunny intervals, light winds and no rain, we set off for Littleferry to stretch our legs along its sands - to have our enjoyment marred by showers, a biting wind, low cloud and....

....another walker. Yes, another walker, with her dog, walking in the same direction as us, on OUR beach!

I am becoming cantankerous in my old age. I don't like it when things don't follow the usual rules. I don't like change, and I particularly don't like it when it involves my favourite things - like a good, long, lonely walk along Littleferry's sands.

To make matters worse, the cloud cover made it difficult to spot the wildlife, much of which had moved to the other side of Loch Fleet because of the crowds of people on our side. 

The picture shows part of a raft of about fifty eider, and we also saw the usual oystercatchers, cormorants, gulls and crows; and, just above the high tide line....

....one of Loch Fleet's seal population.

The Panasonic DMC-fz200

In the summer of 2009 I swapped my long and rather heavy expedition kayak for a much smaller, more manoeuvrable boat, something more suitable for the close-inshore paddling I was doing and from which I could do tricky things like catch mackerel - without overturning.

I was very pleased with my purchase, which was new, until I discovered it had a small leak, and this had allowed water to wet my existing digital camera, a Kodak Z730, which promptly stopped working. I replaced the Kodak with....

....this machine, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-fz200 which I chose, not out of any great knowledge of digital cameras, but because it had, as well as a viewfinder,....

....a screen which could be rotated, making closeups of very small things, such as tiny fungi, relatively easy.

I have used this camera ever since. It has survived international travel, to North America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa, it has survived the rigours of heat and cold and rain, and of Scottish and montane and desert climates. Then, the other day....

....the screen stopped working.

The internet tells me that this is a weakness of this camera - but I would hardly call anything a weakness when the machine has behaved impeccably in taking several hundred thousand pictures.

So I am replacing it, not with something more modern, something with the latest in digital magic, but with another DMC-fz200.

Tremella mesenterica

The dreicht weather continues, with the temperature hovering just above zero at night, followed by a damp, misty-grey, windless day. It's hardly weather to cheer us over the Christmas holiday but we've been out in it every day, mostly walking or biking the forestry tracks from which, frustratingly, we can just see....

....occasional flash of sunshine on the hills; so those who have climbed Bheinn Bhraggie in the last few days describe warm sunshine above the mist.

This isn't enough for some who have decided to quit the east of Scotland's weather in search of sunshine elsewhere, and have chosen Lochaber instead. This is almost unheard of: Lochaber sunnier than East Sutherland? Incredible! What next?

On the positive side, what we know as witches' butter seems to thrive in these conditions. We always find it growing on branches of dead gorse, of which there is an abundance where the estate has cut back the roadside verges.

Tremella mesenterica is a spectacular jelly fungus so richly deserves more than one name: it's also known as yellow brain fungus. According to the Woodland Trust's website here, European legend had it that, "....if yellow brain fungus appeared on the gate or door of a house it meant that a witch had cast a spell on the family living there. The only way the spell could be removed was by piercing the fungus several times with straight pins until it went away."

 Wishing all our readers a very happy Christmas.

Squirrels

Our walk to the village this morning was through cold, damp mist which....

....drifted into the woods leaving everything, including the going underfoot, unpleasantly slippery.

This weather did have a positive side, however, for Squirrel Alley was busy....

....with squirrels which seemed reluctant to run away. The reason for this unusual behaviour soon became evident.

Someone in the adjacent houses had filled their feeders with hazel nuts.

Rabbit

If this rabbit looks very content with life it has good cause: it has moved in to our garden, taking up residence, we think, under the large gorse bush at the bottom of our plot.

As I wrote in this post in early November, I wouldn't normally welcome a rabbit but, having been prolific in the fields through much of the summer, they are now only to be seen around the houses. Their leaving the fields has had a knock-on effect: we used to see plenty of buzzards and red kites but they are now scarce.

Sadly, the roe deer are even more scarce. Each day when we walk in to the village through the woods we stalk up on those places where there used to be deer visible. We find some hoof prints, but haven't seen a deer in ages.

I miss these encounters with wild animals. Seeing rabbits and kites and deer and red squirrels may not hold the excitement of walking amidst the animals of the savanna lands of Africa but it's better than a world empty of wildlife.

Caribbean Christmas

Christmas is very different when one is thousands of miles away from close family and in an environment that doesn't seem that 'Christmassy' - like Jamaica. 

We had two Christmases in the Caribbean, and they were very different. The celebration for the first was out on the patch of very rough lawn in front of Excelsior College's four teaching staff houses, where we occupied number 1. Those there with us were Keith, his wife Diane, two daughters (in pink), and son (pointing the gun) who had #2, Rick and Irene and their children Christian and Rachel who had #3, and Ian and Cherry with their son Mark who were in #4; and we were joined by a colleague, Bob, and his Puerto Rican wife Cynthia.

We moved tables out onto the 'lawn', cooked contributions towards the feast and, as the light failed, watched a hired film, 'The Count of Monte Christo', which we projected using the school's projector two or three times in order to get our moneysworth.

The second Christmas was very different, spent in a house which was part of a holiday complex where Princess Margaret had stayed during her honeymoon. While we cooked a proper Christmas meal, the emphasis of the holiday was....

....beside the pool with its....

....views out across the Caribbean Sea.

Once again we were with friends, Sandy and Steve, who had a son, Luke (seen on the right here with our daughter Elizabeth).

Somehow the day didn't seem much like Christmas, and we missed being with our close family, but who would swap this for a grey British Christmas?

Winter Strawberries

Dawn at today's solstice, looking out across the Moray Firth at 8.30 this morning. It's mid-winter here but in our garden....

....our strawberries are doing well.

A couple of days ago the media was making quite a fuss of a Sussex farm which was growing and ripening strawberries in winter - see Sky News story here. Well, our winter strawberries grow in our garden in the north of Scotland, and they don't need the greenhouses, heat, lights and special feeding processes that the Sussex ones do.

So far, these unique strawberries have survived a couple of frosts and some very damp, chilly weather. There's no sign of them rotting - mind you, there's no sign of them ripening either - but we're confident that, in a few week's time, we'll be sitting down to eat the first bowlful of our home-grown strawberries.

Of course, we'd be very pleased indeed if some entrepreneur or other, seeing a real opportunity here, were to make us a handsome offer for this priceless plant, with the intention of using it to breed cheap, tasty winter strawberries.

We'll keep you posted.

The Dark Squirrel

We're seeing one or more of the red squirrels almost every time we walk along the section of path down to the village which we call Squirrel Alley, perhaps because the deciduous trees have now lost most of their leaves and because, with winter here, the squirrels are coming to the feeders.

This squirrel has been particularly difficult to photograph. However, today, instead of scampering up the tree as it usually does, it spent more time stationery, watching me and....

....clawing at the tree, perhaps hoping that the noise would chase me away. When I didn't go, the squirrel gave up, turned round, and....

....made its way to the ground, with several stops to make the clawing noises again, and then disappeared into a dense gorse thicket.

This is very different behaviour to the other squirrels which, when they want to get away from us, climb up one of the taller trees and then make their escape along the higher branches.

There's something else about this squirrel: although it isn't very evident from the pictures, it's coat is definitely a few shades darker than the others.

The 'French' Painting

Recently, I wrote about this painting which the family inherited from my mother, referring to it as the 'French painting' because that is how she described it in the list she made of her possessions, although it was bought in London in 1937 - see earlier post here.

One of this blog's readers, DM, has taken on the challenge of finding out a little more about the artist and has found some paintings, including....

....this one, which were painted by the same man.

DM writes, "There was a Japanese artist called Yokouchi Kiyoharu (Ginnosuke) (1870–1942). The date fits." This is evidently the artist, so there's more about him here.

If only my mother were alive today to tell us why she bought it. As far as I can ascertain, in 1937 she came back to Britain from Zanzibar having completed her two-year contract - which she then extended. So she must have bought the painting on that 'leave'. But she travelled back to Zanzibar by train via Paris and Marseille, where she joined the ship - so she must have brought the painting back in her luggage.

There are so many questions, to most of which there can now be no answer. However, I'm sure that she'd be thrilled to know that we were taking so much interest in a picture which she obviously loved - and might be intrigued if she didn't already know that the picture came from far away Japan, via a shop in London's King William's Street.

Coast Path Walk

We walked the coast path this morning, from the village northwards passing.... 

....below Dunrobin Castle. With a high tide, the shore was almost deserted of waders except for....
 

....a couple of curlews and as many redshanks, all of which were working over the seaweed deposited on the beach by recent high tides.

On the castle side of the path there's a large thicket of sea buckthorn. Its berries have hardly been touched this winter, which indicates that we haven't had many Scandinavian incomers, such a redwings, yet, as they strip these bushes quickly. So the local birds were taking advantage of the feast, including....

....this female blackcap which allowed us to move up to within two metres before flying away. We also spotted....

....this, rather more reticent bird which I think may have been a bullfinch.

We walked until we reached this gate which leads out onto open fields, where we turned and set off on a sunny but rather chilly return to the car.