Beach and Links

Golspie's south beach has changed since we last walked it, but not in an expected way after several weeks of calm weather. Much of the sand has gone, and there is far more seaweed, in amongst which....

....we found this 4"-long fish, perhaps a small ling, which, although still alive, had a nasty wound.

Small flights of eider kept coming along the shore from the direction of Loch Fleet, and then going back again, as if communal exercise was the order of the day.

With the tide rising we walked homewards along the links at the back of the beach, where masses of wildflowers are beginning to appear. These wild pansies carpeted the ground in places....

....but limited their dominant colour combinations to lilac, mauve and white; it's possible have all-white or all-yellow petals, or combinations with them.

I dread finding an interesting caterpillar as they present the same problems, though not on as large a scale, as wildflowers. After some searching under 'black and white hairy caterpillar' I identified it as the caterpillar of the dark tussock moth. The UKMoths website says of it, "Primarily a moorland and coastal species, inhabiting heathland, sand-hills and shingle beaches, it is distributed in southern England, parts of northern England and central Scotland. It also occurs in parts of Ireland." So it shouldn't have been here.

As we approached the village along the golf course we checked on the sand martins' apartments, to find that most of their nesting holes, which had been under the white post, had collapsed but that they had rebuilt further to the left.

The Wildflowers of Golspie Glen

We walked up Golspie Glen this morning in bright sunshine, with the new leaves in fresh greens on the trees and a mass of wildflowers in bloom which weren't out a few days ago.

I find identifying wildflowers hugely frustrating. I should just appreciate them for their beauty but, for no logical reason, I want to know what they are. Some, like wild garlic and....

....wood anemone, I know, but when....

....I find something new I have a problem. Usually, I can find it fairly quickly in some of the big books we have - I have one which goes by the name of 'keble-martin' after the author, which was given to us by dear friends a long time ago and is now very well worn - but our books are in store in Essex so I resort to search engines, and finding a plant takes ages. Anyway, I did identify this one: it's white comfrey.

With two more we found, I failed. The leaves on this look very like wild garlic but it produces a grass-like head. It's all over the glen and along some of the roadsides in Backies, so must be a fairly common plant, but I can't find it....

....any more than I can nail down this one, which is also all over the place, growing very close to water along the burns. It's very frustrating, which is why I end this post with....

....a bird, which I can identify. It's a grey wagtail, not to be confused, despite its colour, with the yellow wagtail which doesn't get up as far as northern Scotland in its summer migration. A pair were hunting insects along the dry bed of the burn and watching their aerobatics was a pleasure.

Into the Hills Again

It's about three-quarters of an hour's steady climb along the Golspie Tower road and then the Beinn Bhraggie forestry tracks to reach the gate which leads out onto....

....the open moorland where we so love to walk. Today, on a cloudless May morning, we followed this path through land which is now very dry, the heather brittle and the peat crackling underfoot as if it's waiting to catch fire.

There are now, at last, signs of oncoming summer, with the blaeberries coming into flower and....

....plenty of insects, including numerous tiger beetles. It's certainly not called a tiger beetle because of its colour but it is, like its namesake, a ferocious and fast hunter, catching spiders, ants and caterpillars by chasing them across the ground.

There are plenty of these around too. Previously, we've only seen occasional, lone specimens of the green hairstreak but today they were everywhere, and a joy to watch.

We walked to the viewpoint at the end of the path and stood for some minutes in the warm sunshine looking out across the glen of the Golspie Burn towards Ben Horn. Beyond is the big Kilbraur wind farm and beyond it the hills of central Sutherland with evidence that winter is reluctant to loosen its grip.

On our way back we lingered to listen to two cuckoos calling in the coniferous forestry, and to watch a buzzard wheeling high above us. Just inside the forestry we stopped again when a roe deer burst across the track and, further down....

....to admire the first ladybird of the year even though it was 'only' the common seven-spot variety.

Small Bird Report

We start with the not-so-small birds who insist on muscling in on the food and facilities provided, including a pair of herring gulls which perch on the roof above our bedroom around dawn - which is now very early - and jump up and down to make sure we're awake. Not only do they use the bird bath, they also scavenge under the feeders: a big herring gull trying to pick up a grain of millet is a ridiculous sight.

The corvids, rooks (above) and jackdaws, continue to be pains. While they can't perch on the feeders they've quickly learnt that they can knock against them and then pick up the grain that's fallen to the ground. We discourage them but they are becoming ever bolder: at one time a tap on the window sent them on their way; now we have to go outside and chase them.

The starlings know very well where they're not supposed to be. It seems a shame not to be able to include them in the small bird category but they have the appetite of a crow and the table manners of a herring gull.

We started our bird feeding at the new house with a pair of sparrows. Now we have a host of them - but they're great fun, enjoying communal baths whether they be of the wet or....

....dry variety, having fights and arguments, and trying to sort out, very noisily, who is mating with whom this year. Further, to save time, they've stopped roosting somewhere else and now spend the night in the tangled honeysuckle bush by the side of the house.

The greenfinches have become regulars here, possibly as many as three pairs. This is the slightly dowdier female.

The tits are becoming very used to us. When we go out to shoo away the crows they watch with satisfaction from the tree and are back on their food as soon as we've shut up. As well as blue tits, we see plenty of great its and the occasional coal tit.

We've seen three male chaffinches in the garden at one time so they are also doing very well, the cock chaffinches looking very smart in their mating plumage.

Goldfinches are occasional visitors, and then only one or two at a time. They don't hang around either, perhaps because they don't enjoy the competition around the feeders. It's a shame as they are a pretty little bird.

In addition, we also have visits from dunnocks, blackbirds, collared doves, wagtails and, now, a sparrowhawk, which comes barrelling along the fence and pounces on anything that doesn't get into the trees extremely quickly. I have no problem with them feeding on the birds: it keeps the population healthy and is part of the rich natural order, but I do wish they preferred to eat gulls and crows.

Rhives Chambered Cairn

Golspie is, like much of this area of Scotland, rich in sites dating back thousands of years but this is the oldest site we've visited. It's set on the slopes of Beinn Bhraggie, overlooking the town, just inside an area of mature, mixed woodland.

The cairn is best approached from Rhives Farm along one of the many foot and cycle tracks maintained in Beinn Bhraggie woods. The cairn is just inside one of the fields of Golspie Tower Farm, a gate leading out from the woodland giving good access.

While the site is on a spur of slightly higher ground the monument would have been even more pronounced when it was built, the monoliths being covered then by a mound of loose stones some 18m in diameter.

From the cairn there are magnificent views across the Moray Firth and down into Golspie. With the entrance to the inner chambers being to the SSE -  to the right in this picture - the area in front of it, which would probably have been open and flat, where the ceremonies took place, would have enjoyed the full view.

This is the view from the east. When first described, there were 13 upright monoliths but today only seven remain, all of them forming the sides of three chambers, so the original cap stones that covered the chambers are all missing.

This plan shows the chambers, '1' being the entrance chamber while the mature tree is in chamber '3'.

The site is an historic monument, described as being Neolithic and built between 3800 and 2500BC, so it's around 5000 years old. Scottish chambered cairns have been divided into 'types'; this one is of the Orkney-Cromarty type. A detailed description of these cairns is here.

Silence

This rather drab picture only matters for what you, the reader, cannot experience from it: the silence. The only sounds against this silence, as we stood for some time on the old coast road looking out across the Dornoch Firth, were....

....the slow suck of the waves of low tide amidst the seaweed and stones and....

....behind us, the birdsong in Dunrobin Woods - robin, wren, blackbird, song thrush, chaffinch, dunnock and many more - but not....

....this silent little wanderer from treetrunk to treetrunk, a tree creeper.

The woods are increasingly decorated with wildflowers. The bluebells are about to explode across the open ground under the high deciduous trees, taking over from the fading primroses but joined by violets, wood anemone, campion and this one, cuckooflower. One day I hope to find my favourite wildflower, a wild orchid.

Quarries

There are small quarries scattered all along the tracks that wind through the Sutherland Estate forestry. A few, like this one, were developed to exploit the local sandstone which is an excellent freestone with a warm colour, so was used in most of the older buildings around here.

On one of the surfaces I found what might be the tracks of a small two-legged dinosaur, perhaps a velociraptor, each footprint about thirty millimetres long - except that these are Devonian sandstones laid down soon after the first fish emerged from the ocean intent on colonising the land.

Most of the quarries are for aggregate for the roads. In digging this one the workmen left a pool of water which, at first sight, seemed barren but, on more careful inspection....

....was home to numerous tadpoles. Heaven knows what they have been eating as the pool contains hardly any vegetation, while....

....Mrs MW's find, a small group of common newts, had plenty to eat - the tadpoles.