A Gloomy Day

The contrast between today\s weather and yesterday's couldn't be more stark: when Mrs MW walked down to the shops yesterday she wore a t-shirt, while today she was back in a winter coat.

The day's general gloom, and an accompanying thin drizzle, made photography challenging, at a time of year when, suddenly, a great deal is happening. So....

....this attempt at a red squirrel was the best I could get.

More frustrating was my encounter with three roe deer, the first since last August. None of them would stop long enough to have their picture taken. Their nervousness is understandable: the estate has been managing its deer population though the winter, and culling quite a few of them.

It's amazing how many chiffchaffs have arrived and how quickly they're spreading through the forestry. I would guess that there is now a chiffchaff every 200m or so along the tracks, enough for me to find one which would stay still long enough for a photo.

Only the other day I was bemoaning the lack of yellowhammers. Well, this male has now arrived in one of the yellowhammers' favourite spots, just by the small quarry where the tadpoles and newts can be found. He was alone but singing lustily so, hopefully, he'll soon be attracting a mate.

Peacock

In the early afternoon the peacock was back in his garden today, sunning himself on a rock and occasionally visiting the heather flowers.

After a long, grey winter it was a joy and a tonic to sit and watch this beautiful creature, and to bask with him in the sunshine and 17C warmth.

First Butterfly of the Year

A few bumblebees have been busy in the back garden during the occasional sunny interval over a couple of weeks now but we did not expect that they would be joined this morning by....

....the first butterfly of the year, a peacock. Not that we should really have been surprised as the weather is perfect for an early-flying butterfly, with clear skies, no wind, and a still-air temperature of over 13C.

However joyful we were to see this butterfly we couldn't refrain from patting ourselves on the back because these first butterflies and bees are dependent for their early appearance on the food in the garden - and we're therefore thrilled that our planting over the last two years while we've been developing the garden has produced some flowers which these pioneer insects can exploit.

Both the pictures of the bee and the butterfly are of the same plant, a heather, one we bought over the internet two years ago. How the nursery managed to persuade a heather to flower at a time when we could still have snow and plunging temperatures is a mystery to me, but it has definitely had the desired effect.

Seen and/or Heard

I like to set out on a walk, as I did this morning, with some sort of purpose in mind. Today it was to count how many different bird species I either saw (S) and/or heard (H) - and I started well with a red kite (S&H) flying above me as I left the house, followed by the very distinctive tapping of a woodpecker (H) in the woodland by the sheep field.

Most of the walk was through this sort of terrain, with the open area in the foreground the result of the fire that swept though part of the estate land some years ago. There I identified buzzard (S&H), chaffinch (S&H) - lots of them - dunnock (H), blue tit (H)....

....robin (S&H), blackbird (S&H), wren (H), wood pigeon (S&H), collared dove (S&H), rook (H), carrion crow (S&H), pink-footed goose (H) and....

....this song thrush (S&H) which serenaded me with an abandon of joy.

Because I didn't count the birds which are close in to the houses because they're being fed by people like me, some of the birds that might have been included in the count included great tit, coal tit, siskin, goldfinch and green finch.

The highlight of the walk occurred along this stretch of track where my Merlin app once again insisted that....

....a chiffchaff was calling. Last time this happened, on Tuesday a week ago - see blog entry here - I dismissed it as an error, but today there was no doubt: the first chiffchaff (H) has arrived. Sadly, although I spent some time searching for him, he was invisible in the dense coniferous plantation.

Which leaves me with a total of sixteen birds either seen and/or heard in an hour's walk.

Introducing Harry

This is not something we normally do, name a wild animal, but this sparrowhawk is exceptional. He's in our garden almost every day, sometime spending time perched on a vantage point where he can wait for a meal to come his way, somethings passing through, at high speed, almost as if he's not really hungry but he wants to remind the small birds that he's around and hasn't forgotten them.

Harry's a good name because it both describes what he does - he harries the small birds - and it sounds princely - and a prince he certainly is.

We're now waiting with some impatience to see if he finds a mate to show off to us, and to the small birds.  If he does, I wonder what we'll call her.

Friends

Judging by the photographs in the album my mother made for me to take to England when I was sent to school there in January 1954, I was not short of friends - this is my third birthday, at the old German bungalow in Dar-es-Salaam.

However, one or two photos show a different picture. The boy at the right, all by himself, is me at the Crole-Rees' party on one of the Dar-es-Salaam beaches. I don't look unhappy. I just look as if I don't want to be doing what the others are doing.

When we moved to Mombasa and went to the European primary school just down the road from our house we had many friends. This is the first of four pictures taken at the Swimming Club. My brother Richard and I are at centre, and the girl and boy at right and left lived in one of the flats in the building next door to our house in Cliff Avenue - I think owned by one of the banks. Sadly, I can only remember the boy's name, David.

I look quite happy in this picture which shows Mrs Shinn, wife of a colleague of my father's, with her daughters Sandra, right, and Rhonelda. We didn't like them mostly because my father, who had always wanted a daughter, kept threatening to swap one of us for one of the Shinn girls.

In this picture, from left to right, are John Solly, me, Mark Solly and my brother Richard, gathered round the yacht made for me by an engineer on one of my father's ships, and called Defender after the last ship my grandfather commanded. The picture was taken in 1953.

This picture shows the four of us again but with a boy, on the right, whom I remember but can't name - and look how unhappy I am! I suspect that this might have been in the summer holidays of 1954 or '55, shortly before I set out for school in England.

A Saturday Walk

We parked this morning at a point along the Littleferry road where a short walk gave us this view across Loch Fleet. From here we could watch the a scattering of birds working the mudflats - mallard, shelduck, widgeon, oystercatcher, curlew, and half-a-dozen gulls - before crossing the road and plunging....

....into the plantation, parts of which were badly hit by the storms of the early winter.

Walking through this woodland we identified wren, crow, woodpecker and blackbird but the place was eerily silent, so we were quite pleased to emerge on the far side onto....

....a sandy beach reappearing after the 8am high tide, with something dark lying on it - visible at very centre of this picture - which turned out to be....

....a seal, minding its own business while it enjoyed the sun.

We skirted widely round it but it didn't enjoy our presence so....

....made its way down the beach and, reluctantly....

....out to sea, from where it lay watching us until we had passed.

We walked a little further along the beach, seeing just three oystercatcher, three sanderling and a single gull, until we found a spot where we could sit and watch the view and the occasional passing humans - in the event, just one small group of three people with three dogs.

It was a beautiful morning for a walk, if a little chilly, but the lack of wildlife - even allowing that many species may already be involved in pairing up and nest-building - remains a real worry.

Sea Eagles

Sea eagles were reintroduced in Scotland when Norwegian birds were released, first on Rum in 1975 and then on Mull in 1985. Almost as soon as we arrived on Ardnamurchan in 1997 to run the Kilchoan shop, with Rum just to the north of us and Mull to the south, we began seeing them, and by the time we left they were well-established and had begun nesting on Ardnamurchan itself.

They were soon displacing the resident golden eagle population, which retreated inland as the sea eagles' range expanded. Not that their arrival was welcomed by all. I have seen enough sea eagles passing over....

....with the pathetic remains of a lamb in its talons to have a deep sympathy for the crofters who were losing both income and their much-loved animals.

Sea eagles are magnificent birds to watch, so we soon learned that, if we wanted to see one, then we needed to pay attention to the local gull population which, when an eagle strayed into their territory, would get up and mob it - noisily.

Not that it is easy to identify whether the large raptor one is watching is a sea eagle, golden eagle or buzzard. The best way of telling from a distance is if one can recognise the birds that are mobbing it; things like the crows and gull are dwarfed by the sea eagle's size.

Here on the east coast descendants of the sea eagles which were released on the west coast so many decades ago are now starting to arrive. We've seen them, always at a distance, and other people have reported quite close encounters - but I have yet to take a good picture of one.

The picture above was taken at lunch time today when a sea eagle - look at the size of the crow chasing it to get an idea of its size - passed over. I saw it - or another - again this afternoon, but without the chance of even a distant photograph.

I look forward to my first really good photograph of a Golspie sea eagle.

Where Have They Gone? - 4

Our retreat from Rhodesia to the UK, and the knowledge that we could not return as it was spiralling downwards into a bitter civil war, was a huge setback for us, for we had hoped to make our lives with its beautiful people in a country which had huge potential.

It was good to see the family. While my parents had been out to visit us in Rhodesia, Mrs MW had seen none of her relatives.

To re-set my 'career', we spent three years in England, the first....

in Bristol where we lived in a damp, pokey ground floor flat. It wasn't ideal as our eldest daughter was born during our time there, while I completed my teacher qualifications at the university.

We made friends in Bristol but we were there for too short a time for these friendships to endure, so the most important were those we had formed before our Rhodesian expedition, in particular....

....Brian and Val Jones whom we had first met while we were students at the University of Keele. While we lost touch with Val, for many years we heard irregularly from Brian: the last we heard of him he was happily settled in Spain.

In the next two years I gained teaching experience and a full teacher qualification in the UK system at the grammar school in Ludlow, Shropshire. There we met many good people to some of whom we extended a warm invitation to come and visit us in our next relocation - to the West Indies - but only one couple took us up on the offer.

So, out of the many friends we made during those three years, we remain in touch with only one couple. In some ways, I suppose, we could not expect to stay in touch with many as we chose a very peripatetic lifestyle - but that does not prevent us wondering what happened to all those we knew well.

Signs of Spring

With NatureScot's Instagram feed today reporting the year's first sightings of adders I set off this morning to walk up the track where, last summer, we had a resident adder, not with great expectations - but instead I found other signs of the changing season, like....

....lambs in the local farmer's fields near the house and, further up the track....

.....the first frogspawn of the year.

These frogs must be pretty optimistic as the weather has been very dry recently, there has been overnight ice on all the standing water, and the forecast for the next few days is for a considerable drop in temperature from the present giddy heights above 10C

My walk also gave me some good pictures of this stonechat. I don't think stonechats are migratory but we haven't seen any over the winter, not until we had a brief sighting of one at Littleferry the other morning.

The Merlin bird ID app produced a surprising result this morning....

....when it reported 'hearing' a chiffchaff. I didn't hear one,  and it seems very early for them, but maybe I was distracted by something else.

On my way home a very noisy running battle was being fought along this forest front between a pair of ravens and a pair of....

....red kites, a confrontation which the kites seemed to win - so perhaps we'll have them nesting near here this summer.

More Firsts

Much of the exterior of Dunrobin Castle has been shrouded in scaffolding through the winter, during which the facade has been renovated - and very good it looked in this morning's bright sunshine.

Below the castle we found the first of the day's 'firsts of the year', a dandelion sprouting out of the rich earth of a mole hill; and shortly afterwards we spotted the second 'first'....

....a very smart pied wagtail sitting, wagging his tail on a wall that forms part of the castle's sea defences.

We continued northwards along the ancient coast track beyond the castle and onwards to this point, where alternating strata of limestone and clay form an indented coast - the limestone forms the 'ribs', being much harder. There's a short section of coast here where Jurassic rocks have been faulted down next to much older Devonian sandstones; there are fossils in these rocks so it is designated as an SSSI, a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Close by we found the third 'first of the year'....

....a lesser celandine.

Judging by previous years, these 'firsts' will start coming at us thick and fast, though how fast will depend on the weather. At the moment the outlook is good.

Two Sides to Littleferry

With both the dawn sky and the weather forecast promising a fine day we drove, once again, to Littleferry, first for....

....a brisk walk along near-deserted sands, spoilt by finding the object at bottom left in this picture....

....a dead guillemot.

Sadly, within a few metres of this, we found two other corpses, both razorbills. To make matters worse, there was little in the way of living birds to see beyond a small flock of oystercatchers, some unidentifiable ducks, a single sanderling, and a carrion crow....

....so, in the hope of finding something to cheer us, we crossed the road to the western side of the Littleferry 'peninsula' where a walk through a coniferous plantation led to good views of the....

....inner pool of Loch Fleet where, along with a good number of ducks - too distant to be identified for certain - a couple of dozen gulls and some waders, we found....

....the Littleferry seals looking as fat as ever, basking on sandbanks which were being rapidly inundated by the rising tide.