Beauty

It doesn't matter that we've now seen hundreds of six-spot burnet moths and even more orchids, their beauty, and the joy of finding them, never seems to fade.

With some things, like these 'uncommon' blues, although we've seen them so often over the years, their colour continues to stun the senses, and when, as on our walk today, they're out in abundance, they're like flying jewels, flying aquamarines.

Some things seem so dull, but then....

....they show their other side, and the surprise takes one's breath away.

So often the delicate beauty of a creature is enhanced by their proximity to the mess we make. This is a skylark, which has, for months, serenaded us with its song.

Again, today, as we crossed the golf course we were wading through a meadow of bright colours, in stark contrast to the mown fairway where all that survives is grass and daisies.

Mrs MW had gone off to see if she could find a different orchid but instead came across....

....something else which doesn't look particularly beautiful but which is another of nature's amazing adaptations. It's called a dune cup fungus, and it may be Peziza ammophilia, which translates as 'the Piziza which likes sand' because it is capable of surviving on bare, coastal dunes.

We are so, so fortunate to live in a place surrounded by these riches.

Small Bird News

The explosion in sparrow numbers has continued, to the extent that we've now had to stop putting out our extra-special, high-energy, vitamin-and-mineral-rich seed mix to discourage the parents from having what is probably a third or fourth family this year. We've also....

....had to give up on the fat balls because, although we built increasingly elaborate cages designed so only the more acrobatic birds could benefit, the sparrows....

....soon proved they could find a way round any barriers.

So we're largely putting out peanuts, and here we do have designs with which the sparrows can't cope, yet, though....

....they're still enjoying the older designs, which I am loath to abandon since....

....they attract birds, like this greenfinch, which probably couldn't cope with feeding upside-down.

Birds enjoying the peanuts including this a siskin on a brief visit, only the second we've seen in the garden, though there are plenty in Dunrobin woods. We have also seen a very fine male bullfinch, who flew off far too quickly for me to get a picture.

So, sadly, there'll be very little seed put out until the sparrow hawk and winter have started to thin out the sparrow population.

Wandering

Mostly, Mrs MW and I walk together on the many and sometimes rather long walks we do round Golspie but sometimes, as she did today, she leaves me to do my own thing. So I was left in the meadow just the village side of Dunrobin Castle and spent my time....

....wandering around looking for beautiful things to photograph, which included this meadow brown male, which is, unusually, rather dowdier than....

....the female.

Between the occasional light showers the common blues were on the wing. There seem to be plenty of males around but I have yet to find a female, which doesn't bode well for the continuation of the local species.

The six-spot burnets were also buzzing around, in pathetically small numbers compared to Littleferry, but this, the only one I managed to photograph, seemed, like others around Dunrobin, to have its rear two spots close to or actually fusing, so perhaps this is a local feature.

The beach, with the tide almost high, was largely deserted except for....

....a ringed plover and a pair of dunlins working the seaweed line.

I re-checked the area around the orchid growing just at the back of the beach and found no others, so it has flowered alone this year. I'm still struggling with orchid identification but I'm more than ever inclined to lump all the local purple orchids into the northern marsh species.

Rather more people than usual seemed to be out walking this morning. I don't know what they thought of someone chasing insects around a field but I can't have seemed much more peculiar than the man who was busy dismantling a pallet which had been washed up on the foreshore.

'Sail'

I'm sorting out the 'library' of books that has come up with us to Golspie. It's a pale shadow of the masses of books we had in Maldon and Kilchoan but we still have many of the most precious and interesting. This is one, a book which my father had but which I hadn't realised, or had forgotten,...

....was his father's. From the inscription on the flyleaf, it was given to Ernest Haylett in Beira in February1930 - see earlier post here. - some two weeks after he sailed his model of the 'Hesperus' in Beira harbour. I have no idea who T. B. Ressouf was but he acquired the book in 1928, the year after it was published.

The book is beautifully illustrated to show a range of the great clippers which dominated the oceans in the second half of the 19th century, and one of those included in the book is Hesperus.

Each picture is accompanied by a three or four page history of the ship. This clip from the story of the Hesperus shows that, having been built in 1873, she was bought by Lord Brassey in 1890 to continue trading with Australia, taking both passengers and cargo, but as a cadet training ship, and we know that Ernest was abroad her as a cadet in 1894.

This clipping gives a few details of a voyage to Australia in 1895, when it is very likely that Ernest was aboard. Later - we don't know when - Ernest left the Hesperus to join Lord Brassey's yacht, the Sunbeam - see post here.

Only 1,000 copies of the book were printed, each of the thirty ships having a full-page colour picture. 

This is one of my favourite pictures, of the American-built Flying Cloud under full sail with a following wind.

Ernest didn't keep his models and over the years my family had lost track of them, until the other day, when I was told that it's almost certain that his model of the Hesperus is in a museum in Durban, though they have mis-identified both the ship and the model's builder.

The above picture is in my father's album, and I do wonder whether Ernest took it in Durban before he left the model there.

Littleferry - 2

With such a wealth of wildflowers in bloom at Litteferry yesterday, the burnets weren't the only insects in flight. There were masses of bees, and the butterflies included common blues, little heaths and....

....several dark green fritillaries with their bold upper wing markings and....

....underwings which have some resemblance to those of the painted lady. This fritillary gets its name from the greenish colouration on the underwing.

Of course, with so many insects in flight, so were their predators. This is a mistle thrush, very similar to a song thrush but rather bigger and less common, though it's widespread throughout Britain. It was hunting through the wildflowers but wouldn't allow us to approach, continually hopping away from us until we lost it in long grass.

I dread coming across interesting-looking fungi as I can't resist taking a picture, and then feel the need to identify it. This one was remarkable for two reasons, one its size and shape - it was about 10cm across - and the other its ability to flourish on 'soil' that was little more than beach sand.

It took ten minutes on the web to find something that resembles it, particularly the fact that the upper surface is covered with sand. It look like a cavalier mushroom, the only difference I can see between this one and the one described here being that the Littleferry specimen is paler.

Littleferry

It's a reflection on the variety of walks we've enjoyed direct from our house that, when we took the car to Littleferry this morning, it was only the second time the vehicle had moved from the drive since late March.

However, as soon as we had parked we realised we'd been missing out. Within yards of the car park we came across bell heather in full flower, masses of smaller wildflowers, and a fine orchid.

Minutes later we found another - very obviously, from the three lobes on the lower lip of the flower, an early marsh orchid - and....

....another and another, and bigger and bigger, until....

....we were standing looking at them in their hundreds - as Mrs MW put it so neatly, "Forests of them!"

At the same time we found something else, a proper six-spot burnet with its rear two spots well separated. We were thrilled but then....

....we started seeing more, and more, and more, until we had to walk the paths with great care to avoid treading on them.

They were feeding on a variety of flowers - these two are on purple milk-vetch - including, to our considerable joy....

....the orchids. So this is a picture of two of my favourite obsessions!

A Walk in the Woods

We walked up in the woods below Beinn Bhraggie this afternoon, going up by Rhives farm into mature deciduous woodland which, in the fleeting sunny intervals, resembled the interior of a great green cathedral. A few parts of this woodland haven't been invaded by bracken yet but even in those that have....

....the bracken offers a resting spot for any of the wildlife, like this speckled wood, which was looking to take advantage of the moments of sun. 

Higher on the hill there are extensive areas of boggy ground and in one of these we came across orchids. These were all....

....heath spotteds, varying from brightly patterned in purple through to....

....some which, unless one looked very closely, seemed entirely white.

We walked on, finding that the path continued to be lined with orchids, and we realised that these were all part of the earlier heath spotted site we've found above Golspie Tower - post here - making it by far the most extensive area of orchids we've discovered so far,