Mallards

Today's weather has had a distinctive 'west coast' feel to it, raining most of the time with the clouds low over the hills and temperatures struggling to reach double figures. This comes after a week of strong winds and, on some nights, plunging temperatures, with the result that....

....some of the vegetables we've planted out have suffered from frostbite, the dwarf beans in particular.

However dreich the weather we walk every day, today across the Golspie Burn and up into Backies to collect very large brown free range eggs from a smallholding at £1.50 for six.

We returned through the woodland along Golspie Glen, stopping for a few minutes at the town's Skating Pond - this certainly didn't freeze over this winter and one wonders when it last did. We're hoping to see dragonflies on it - not in this weather - but its only resident was....

....Mrs Mallard who was not too keen on our arrival, her unwillingness to take off and find somewhere undisturbed quickly explained when....

....she was joined by two ducklings.

April Showers

The view out of the bedroom window this morning gave us good notice of the sort of day in prospect - cool, with occasional sunny intervals and sudden, rather chill showers - more like April than mid-May but ideal, perhaps, for....

....a brisk walk along an almost deserted beach to the south of Golspie, with the tide falling and a chance to check on the various waders' nests along the upper beach.

The first ringed plovers' nest, with the single egg, has disappeared, but a parent was on duty at the second, with the four eggs, which is a good sign. However, there was also a worried plover lurking at the spot where we saw the three birds courting on Wednesday, so there is a good chance that there's a nest there now.

The oystercatchers were on duty, with one of them on the nest - it's just visible at the very top of the beach. However, what is worrying for all three nests is the way the sea is removing sand from the beach at the moment. The sand seems to come and go, with the beach losing sand if the wind is onshore, and gaining it if the wind is offshore.

We walked back along the links, finding this exceptionally hairy caterpillar within yards of where we found the dark tussock moth caterpillar last Friday - see post here. I think it's the caterpillar of the garden tiger moth, which is a rather spectacular moth - link here - described as 'not common' in Britain. It's sometimes called the 'woolly bear' caterpillar.

However, the find of the day as far as I was concerned was this dead stalk. I'm fairly certain it's what's left of a frog orchid from last year. There are plenty of them along at Little Ferry but this is the first we've found near Golspie. It was very solitary, so we do hope there are more come July when the frog orchids should be in flower.

Gorse

The gorse has been in flower for weeks now. It's probably the earliest wild shrub here to flower and for ages we wondered why it bothered to start so early as there seemed to be no insects around to show any interest until....

....we finally did find one, solitary bee. It may be that gorse is pollinated by something relatively invisible, like moths at night.

Gorse is very pretty, particularly when in full flower in a year like this one, when it seems to be doing particularly well. Gorse is native to Scotland but had a limited extent. The warming of the climate seems to have been one of the factors in its very rapid spread, so now it is hideously invasive.

Around Golspie, there are large areas of land which are now buried in it, including increasing areas of the links to the south of the golf course. This view of Silver Rock is across the kart track.

It's steadily creeping up Beinn Bhraggie towards the Duke's statue; perhaps it will do us a favour and cover him.

Waders' Nests

Walking below the point on the upper beach where we had seen the second ringed plovers' nest with its four eggs - see earlier post here - we spotted one of the parents amongst the dried seaweed who....

....promptly settled on the nest. It was so good to see this as the tracks of several dogs ran up towards the immediate area.

While we were watching we spotted another ringed plover further back along the beach, where we had seen the single egg abandoned, so it's possible that this first nest is active again.

A little further along the beach we saw three plovers engrossed in each other. Look closely and it seems that two of them are displaying to the third, presumably a female, so we may have yet another plovers' nest on this section of the beach.

While we were watching them we became aware of an oystercatcher standing on the pebbles at the very top of the storm beach, as if it was on guard and, sure enough....

....we caught sight of a second, further along, which duly settled on a nest.

At least now we were well aware of the location of the nest so were able to approach it without getting too close and disturbing the parents unduly. The nest can be seen at bottom right of the above picture and....

....it contained three lovely eggs. These have to be incubated for around a month.

We've seen oystercatchers prepare their nests - if that's what you can call them - in the most stupid of places. This pair have done relatively well except that they are very close to a point where there is a car park and access to the beach. Few humans are using it at the moment but this may change.

Wildflowers

It's beginning to become apparent that this area is rich - perhaps exceptionally so - in its variety of wildflowers, partly because there is such a wide range of habitats. Golspie Glen, which is where this Pink Purslane, Claytonia sibirica, lives, seems to be particularly so.

Yet there is no sign anywhere of a group in the area which has an interest in natural history, at least not so I can find it on the internet. Perhaps 'natural history' is the wrong thing to be searching for - it's a bit ancient, like 'nature studies'. This is bugle, Ajuga reptans.

I say 'this is bugle' but I'm not at all sure. At least my researches have unearthed some good identification sites, like this Wildflower Gallery which organises things simply for idiots like me, in colour.

Bugle seems to me to be very similar to this one, which I think, without any great conviction, is Glechoma hederacea, wild ivy. I'm hoping that someone might correct me on any of these identifications if they know I'm wrong.

This flower is very unusual as its the only flower I can remember learning at prep school, not in the Nature Study classes but because I drew it in the Art class, so well - apparently - that it contributed towards my winning an art prize. It's campion.... I hope, or I've been wrong for over sixty years.

This, again, comes from Golspie Glen and is very pretty in a reserved way - perhaps simply because it looks bell-like. It's water avens, Geum rivale.

This is the sort of hedgerow flower that's hardly noticed as there's lots of it at this time of year so it must be a weed. In fact it's rather pretty, delicately so. However, it isn't that easy to identify as there are so many white wildflowers, but I think it's greater stitchwort.

Here again is a flower that I'm pretty certain of, partly because it was very common in the hills around Kilchoan but also because I remember first identifying it from a sheet given us by Ben when we were visiting Balmoral, where he then worked. It's tormentil.

The Plovers' Nest

It was along this section of Golspie's south beach that, almost a fortnight ago, we found a plover' nest with a single egg in it, and remarked at the time that it was a singularly unfortunate place to choose for a nest as far too many walkers, and their dogs, use this section of the beach and, at high tide, walk along the top of the beach exactly where the nest is located.

Sure enough, we have now found the nest abandoned, with plenty of signs of....

....dogs running around and playing in the area - the nest is just visible at bottom right.

However, as we walked on along the beach a couple of days ago we saw a plover by the tide-line, looking agitated, and it only took moment to find the nest....

....this time with four eggs in it.

I do hope the pair have better fortune with their second effort. At least the nest is now further from the point where people come down to the beach and, with spring tides due, is also much higher above the high-tide line.

May Snow

The flowering cherry in our garden finally ventured into flower just in time for the overnight  temperature to plummet to near zero, and for the wind to move into the north, strengthen, and start bringing in snow showers icy-fresh from the Arctic.

So we walked in the protection of Dunrobin woods, where the snow - just visible as white streaks in this picture....

....organised itself into neat, uniformly sized, rounded pellets.

We escaped lightly. As we wandered home along the beach what looked like a giant tornado cell passed to the north of us, perhaps crossing over Brora on its way out to sea. Not that we were too worried about it as we had reverted easily to wearing full winter wet-weather gear and were too interested in what was going on around us, because masses of....

....swallows, sand martins and house martins were zooming low along the seaweed line, presumably catching insects while....

....a mixed flock of ringed plovers and dunlin (above) were working the shore just in front of the rising tide and....

....old man heron was out fishing just offshore.

As we walked up the storm beach to regain the path we stepped across masses of bird's-foot trefoil, often called eggs and bacon plants. Perhaps to cheer us up we should rename it the sunshine flower.