Sunny Littleferry

We needed to clear the frost off the car this morning before we could set off for what promised to be a beautifully fine day at Littleferry, mainly in the hope that we would see rather more in the way of birds than we've been seeing elsewhere recently.

We were disappointed. While there was no shortage of oystercatchers we saw two female - or are they juvenile - eider and....

....one very fine male, the only other birds of note being....

....the skylarks and six pretty little sanderling.

One thing that did not disappoint was the weather, which was warm enough for us to follow the example of....

....the oystercatchers by sitting for some time doing nothing but soak up the warmth of the sun.

A Dispiriting Walk

This morning we walked the coast path that runs northeastwards past Dunrobin Castle, pushed along by a stiff and rather chill westerly wind which brought plenty of gaps in the clouds so we could sit on one of the benches, if only for a few minutes, and bask in the late February sunshine.

If the sunshine was cheering, the wildlife wasn't. In the field below the Castle the winter barley concealed a flock of about a dozen curlew, and along the shore we spotted small numbers of....

....oystercatchers, but otherwise, in a two mile walk, we saw precious little, the only bright spot being a small flock of long-tailed ducks chasing each other some distance offshore.

What really highlighted the dismal state the birdlife was in is illustrated in this picture - one of only five gulls we saw.

When we first came to Golspie this section of coast used to be an exciting walk for the wealth of birdlife it supported. What's happening that we find ourselves hunting for....gulls?

Recovery

This is our sparrowhawk yesterday evening, soaking up some sun after his near-catastrophic collision with the glass balustrade of our balcony. He looked fine and rather laid-back but by this morning he was....

....out hunting with focussed determination. Here, he's on one of the chaffinches' favourite stopping-off points on their way to a hearty meal at our feeders, and....

....here he's looking down onto one of the main feeding areas.

Whereas before we counted ourselves fortunate to see him once in every three days or so, today we spotted him no less than six times - here he's sitting on top of the sunflower feeders in the front yard.

One wonders why he's so frenetically active, whether he didn't feed while he was recovering yesterday or whether he's building himself up, in our present almost springlike weather, for a busy breeding season ahead.

Whatever the reason for this burst of activity it's a relief that he's come through this unhappy episode with no apparent harm.

A Disaster.... Nearly!

At lunch time yesterday the sight of our sparrowhawk apparently dead on the balcony filled me with horror - for it was obvious that he had collided with the glass railing, something which several small birds have done over the last couple of years, often with fatal results, even though we have put decals onto many of the panes.

A close look suggested that the bird was dead. The only sign of life was his tail, which kept flicking up and down.

Then, very suddenly, and to my great relief, he was up on his feet, looking extremely confused but otherwise fine. My next worry was that he might have broken or dislocated a wing but, after almost half an hour of thinking about it, he finally decided....

....it was time to go - but he could not work out how to get either over or under the sheets of glass, expending....

....huge amounts of energy bashing himself against the panes until I could bear it no longer, so went out and shooed him in the right direction, after which he flew off at some speed.

We worried overnight that he still might not survive but this morning, standing at the kitchen sink and watching the tits at the peanut feeders, a familiar brown, barred shadow shot low across the road and into the gorse bush.

It could, of course, be a different sparrowhawk but it seems unlikely that a rival has moved so quickly onto our hawk's patch. So, hopefully, he has survived and learned a hard lesson.

Where Have They Gone? - 3

I spent the Easter and Summer terms of 1963 as a teacher and estate worker at Bernard Mizeki College, a boys' boarding school in the bush of what was then Southern Rhodesia. I was given plenty of responsibility, I was treated as an adult, I was worked exhaustingly hard - and I loved it.

I wasn't the only volunteer. Michael (back left) and Malcolm (foreground left) were out there under the auspices of Voluntary Service Overseas, and we messed together in one of the staff houses.

I met some very dedicated people there and the thought of seeing and working with them again was one of the factors that prompted Mrs MW and I in 1967 to chose to go to what was then Ian Smith's Rhodesia, to teach at the same school.

During the three years of our contract we renewed my old acquaintances, we met many more similar-minded people, and....

....we met relatives of mine who had long settled in the country - picture shows me with my cousin Charlotte in a maize field on one of the Kirkmans' big farms.

When, very regretfully, we left Bernard Mizeki, the leaving card from our colleagues, both teachers and support workers, reflected the variety of people who worked there.

After returning to England we kept in touch with several of them, and had news of others through them. Sadly, as always happens, the connections steadily broke down and, to make matters worse, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe was plunged into a vicious civil war.

Despite this, and despite the decades that have passed, we remained in contact with a few, so we learned that many left the country, scattered to South Africa, Canada, New Zealand and the UK, and some died well before their time.

The contacts with those happy days are now very tenuous, but because our time there was so happy, they remain very precious to us.

Solitude

I consider myself exceptionally fortunate that I can walk a few hundred yards from our house and find myself trudging along paths where I am unlikely to meet anyone - not because I want to avoid human contact but because I am one of those people who craves occasional solitude, and within that solitude a time to think about life without interruption.

On my morning walk today I encountered no-one from the time I left my front door to the moment I returned, refreshed if a bit damp from the rain; and part of that refreshment came from the wildlife that surrounded me on that walk, the song thrush calling for the first time in the trees by our house, the coal tits squabbling over nesting sites and mates, and the first small wildflower of spring....

....a solitary daisy which, in a few weeks' time, I would hardly have noticed.

Unfortunately, I returned to a deserted garden, deserted, that is, except for the cause of its emptiness - the male sparrowhawk which we're feeding, indirectly, at some cost.

Littleferry

Littleferry was beautiful this morning when we arrived at about nine-thirty, with a brisk southwesterly blowing, the temperature soaring to a dizzy 8C, and plenty of cheering sunshine. However, the first thing we saw as we dropped down onto Littleferry's main sandy beach was....

....a dead razorbill.

Happily, this was the only dead bird but it formed a high proportion of the birds at Littleferry as there were so few. So, whereas a few weeks ago we'd have seen perhaps fifty eider, today....

....we found just one pair swimming in the entrance to the loch.

This might all have been very depressing but we were greatly cheered by hearing the songs of the first....

....skylarks of the year, at least three of them, all flying and singing high above the links. These are, I think, the males who have arrived early to stake out their territories.

The weather seemed to spur us into what was, by our standards, a long walk which took us along the banks of the main pool of....

....Loch Fleet, where there were very few birds and no sign of the seals which usually adorn the further sandbanks in this picture.

So.... a very enjoyable morning's walking but, oh!, we are seeing so little wildlife these days!

Searching for Spring

It's the time of year when exciting things Natural are miserably scarce in the woods, so I find myself thrilled to spot something as 'ordinary' as this outbreak of orange mould on a dead twig or....

....a couple of small witches' butter fungal 'flowers' on a dead gorse branch; and I begin to wonder whether, in order to get my daily Nature kick, I should set out to become a world expert on....

....the bewildering array of mosses and lichens, of which there seem to be plenty around even through the worst of the winter months.

Our walk today was promising to be as barren as ever when....

....I heard a bird calling in the pine plantation by Roe Corner, a call I didn't recognise but which the Merlin app identified as a mistle thrush. It was a short, repetitive call, the sound not dissimilar to a song thrush's call but with a very limited repertoire; glorious enough in the circumstances for me to stand for ten minutes listing to it.

Sadly, for all my searching I could not find the bird in the thick tangle of undergrowth but, nearing home, I came across a very welcome but unwelcome sign of the coming spring....

....the first squashed frog of the year.

Hungry Birds

We've had warm sunrises, with skeins of pink-footed geese calling as they fly past each morning, following the coast northwards to their foraging fields.

We've had snow, just a dusting of it, but strange, powdery snow that was exceptionally slippery underfoot and very persistent despite the warm sunshine.

In these conditions the small birds should be eating us out of house and home but, with the exception of the blue, great and coal tits round the front of the house, they're hardly eating anything, instead....

....gazing longingly from afar at feeders overflowing with good food but loath to swoop down to it because....

....you-know-who hangs around hoping, expecting them to do just that.

The Butter Dish

I remember this butter dish from the early days of my courtship of the girl who would later become Mrs MW. She had a pleasant room in one of the modern girl's blocks at the university we shared and, while my room was a tip, hers was always beautifully furnished and kept - to the extent that she would ask friends to join her there for afternoon tea.

I later discovered that the dish came from a pottery run by the monks at Prinknash* Abbey, which was a mile or so from Mrs MW's parents' house, so when I visited her at her home we would sometimes walk together down the beautiful Cotswold lane that led to the abbey.

That walk had another attraction - a small quarry dug into the limestone bank at the side of the lane. This rock contained....

....some superb Jurassic fossils. This is the first one I found, which I kept for many years until I passed my mineral and fossil collection on to one of my grand-daughters. It's a brachiopod, probably a Terebratulid, about 30mm long.

This one, from the same quarry, came under the broad but rather beautiful title of Rhynchonella.

So the Prinknash butter dish is some sixty years old and has been with us on all our travels. It's the sort of souvenir I treasure because it brings back such happy memories of so many people, places and events while at the same time still serving its original purpose today.

* Pronounced 'prinnish'

Sunshine and Sparrowhawk

We've seen the sun occasionally during the last few days, which makes a pleasant change from the late January to early February record, even enjoying two fine sunrises, interesting because, as the sun moves north, they are the last time we will see it rise from the far horizon until late this year when it moves back south again.

Between times we've seen a miserable mix of weather, with snow, sleet, rain, strong winds and temperatures struggling to climb above 5C and, on a couple of nights, dropping towards zero to give us a hard ground frost. 

My usual wet-weather walks have been curtailed by the estate deciding that now would be a good time to improve the track towards Loch Lunndhaid, which has turned it into a bit of a mud bath.

Whatever the weather the sparrowhawk has been busy in the back garden. When he's in hunting mood he's very good at making use of the planks of the wooden ramp, built to enable old people to get safely down to the back garden whatever the weather.

When he's not in hunting mood he sits in a conspicuous position and surveys his realm - but note the way he has one foot on either side of his perch, perhaps to enable him to swivel round and take off quickly in whichever direction his prey has appeared.

He is a very handsome bird, keeping himself very smart whatever the weather. We have a fine view of him from our sitting room window as do the small birds hiding in the gorse bush at the bottom of the garden; and they have to be very patient as he's quite happy to sit on his perch for an hour or more at a time.