Wet Weather on the Open Moor

The hills and mountains of Scotland always seem at their most magnificent when it's raining or, even better, when the rain is just clearing and the sun peeps out. It doesn't rain much in Golspie so our expedition in this morning's rain, up onto the moorland to the west of the village, brought back happy memories of rambles in a wetter part of this country. The picture shows Silver Rock.

We approached the open moorland along a different route through the forestry from the one we had used previously. It started as a muddy track which suddenly ended. This left us with the choice of turning back or following a deer trail through a coniferous forest plantation which had been cleared, leaving a broken landscape of felled tree stumps, boggy holes and new growth, across which the Golspie fire of July 2018 had raged.

Following a deer trail does have advantages as it led to where the deer fence was down, enabling us to get through onto....

....the open moor. As always, my interest was to see if there was any sign of archaeology, particularly as this area had also been burnt in the fire, leaving any sites exposed, but we failed to find anything, except to note the area of pale grassland to the right in this picture, which looks as if it may have been cleared at some point for cultivation.

A Bird Walk

Each walk we take seems to assume a particular personality so today's effort, along the road south from Golspie towards Littleferry, was a walk about birds. The first section of the road runs between the golf course and the fields of Culmaily farm, once a township shared by over fifty families but cleared early in the 19th century to make an extensive arable farm. Today, while some of the fields are ploughed ready for the year's crop, most are down to grass which is shared between cattle, sheep and, over the last week or so, a large flock of....

....greylag geese. These are the ones we've been seeing in great skeins over the town on their way north to feed in fields around Brora. They have now decided to dine at Culmaily farm.

On the golf course side of the road there is a stand of pines, one of which was full of small birds. This is the only one caught on camera, and she's a little unexpected for, if I have identified her correctly, this is a yellowhammer - and, according to the RSPB, there aren't supposed to be yellowhammers along this coast. We did, however, have plenty of this pretty bird on Ardnamurchan, and they're supposed to inhabit lands to the north and south of us.

 A little further on the single-track road plunges into forestry, and it was along this section that we were confronted by....

....over half-a-dozen coal tits. What surprised us was that, firstly, they stood their ground as we approached to within a few feet. Their interest was in....

....the beech leaves, to which they flew down and frantically turned them over, presumably in search of insects and invertebrates such as small slugs.

Secondly, this is the first time we have seen them in a flock. Usually, when they come to the garden feeders, they are either single or in pairs.

We walked on to where the road passes the banks of Loch Fleet. Another high tide meant that, once again, there were few waders to be seen, other than a couple of redshanks. By that time a sunny and increasingly warm day had begun to cloud over, so we turned for home.

The Golf Course Stonechats

This male stonechat is one of a pair of stonechats which we came across early in our time here in Golspie - see post here. Each time we walk that way we see them, so they've managed to survive the winter so far.

They seem most at home in the tall grasses which grow between the fairway and the rock barrier of the sea wall. As we walk along the path along its top they let us approach to within about twenty metres before they fly further along the path. They're often to be found hopping round on the huge rocks but they also....

....own odd bits of rough grassland on the golf course and, of course, the neatly cut swathes of the fairway itself.

The Changing Beach

On Sunday the wind was so strong it knocked a high-sided truck over on the Dornoch Bridge, closing the A9 for a time. Along Golspie beach it chased ribbons of sand, picking grains up and lifting them so high that, in the gusts, they got into our eyes. The people visible in the photo, the only other human occupants of the beach, had a small dog with them, which must have been suffering.

By yesterday the wind had dropped to dead calm.

The beach is constantly changing its shape, moving sand up, then down, sculpting barriers of sand which hold back pools of water, then removing them. There's also a constant winnowing of the sediment so that....

 ....in places only sand is removed leaving even the smallest pebbles.

This constant change means that the beach is never the same two days running; as a consequence we find, more and more, that a wander along its sands is the default walk of the day.

Sometimes we have the sneaking suspicion that the wildfowl along the shore are becoming used to us. Normally, a redshank would fly off before we were in good camera range, but this one stood its ground, as always bobbing up and down as if feeling the stress.

We often see herons along the shore, and these do stand quite happily while we approach. They remind me of old men, stooped and thoughtful: they've seen it all before.

The linear boulder mound on which he stands runs parallel to the shore in front of the town promenade. It can be seen more clearly....

....in this picture taken from the north. I'm told it's an old coastal defence dating back to the time when the fishing village was expanded under the Sutherlands, when they were clearing families from the straths and finding them work - even though they might never have been to sea before.

There's some evidence in this OS map that the lines of boulders were there in 1873, holding back the shingle beach in front of the town, and....

....a much later line of rocks is clearly marked off the SW end of the town in this 1907 map: they are what old man heron now stands on, watching his world.

Sanderling

Sanderling are unremarkable small wading birds of the sandpiper family which migrate south from their breeding grounds in the Arctic tundra to overwinter along some of Scotland's beaches, often in the company of similar waders such as ringed plovers.

We see them in small groups almost every time we walk along the sandy beaches of places like Golspie and Brora. They allow us to approach very close, often preferring to run away from us before reluctantly taking to the air in impressively tight formation, flying out over the sea to return to a less disturbed section of the beach.

They feed on invertebrates which they catch where the waves run up the beach. What I love about them is that all the birds in the flock, as if totally exhausted by the effort of feeding, will suddenly stand on one foot, tuck their heads under their wings, and take a nap, even though....

....they have to wake up and run as the next wave comes in. Even then, many are so laid back that, rather than running, they hop up the beach on the one leg they happen to be using.

They're a lovely little bird from which we have obtained great pleasure. We often stop, sometimes standing for some minutes, just to watch them.

A Geology Map

One of the joys of charity shops is that, in amongst the more or less useful castoffs from other people's lives, my wife occasionally comes across an absolute gem, like this beautifully-framed geology map of the Golspie area.

Not only are these maps a mine of information, most geology maps are works of art, not least because of their bold colours. These go back to the time of William 'Strata' Smith who researched, drew and published....

....the first geological map of England, Wales and southern Scotland in 1815. It was, to put it mildly, a remarkable achievement.

A geological map shows the rocks immediately under the soil, yet it is possible from this information to infer the structure of the rocks deep underground.

Two types of map are published by the British Geological Survey. 'Drift' maps include recent unconsolidated sediments such as sands and gravel, which tend to obscure the underlying 'hard' rocks. Happily, our Golspie map shows the 'solid' geology.

The map now graces the wall of our kitchen-diner.

Smith's geological map courtesy Wikipedia. 

Exploring Littleferry Woodland

The modern road from Golspie south to Littleferry passes through woodland. Balblair Wood, on the west side, is mixed planting, some of it quite old, while the woodland between the road and the beach is coniferous.

One of the pleasures of moving to a new place is its exploration. Having walked through Balblair Wood - post here - the area to the east was next. A path led into it from the Balblair car park but this quickly petered out....

....though the walking remained relatively easy.

As well as exploring, we hoped to have a sighting of the Scottish crossbills which live in this woodland and which should be actively nest-building, but the wood was silent, the only bird making itself visible being a robin.

This is taken from the 1874 OS map which shows that the land at that time was rough grazing with scattered trees. By the time the area was re-surveyed in 1904 the pines had been planted, so they are just over a hundred years old.

In several places distinct, lichen-covered banks ran parallel to the beach, this one the largest and the only one which hadn't been planted - it appears to be marked in the 1874 map. These may be old storm-beaches left behind as deposition moved the coastline eastwards.

The far side of the wood is fenced but fortunately the fence is in poor condition so we soon found a place where we could cross it, returning to Golspie along the beach.