A Feast of Fungi

While the rest of the country is enjoying frost and snow we're suffering under grey skies and a stiff northeasterly which is bringing heavy showers. One of the advantages of Golspie is that there is a fair choice of walks so today's was into the relative shelter of the Dunrobin forestry.

Having fungi to search for at this time of year has been a welcome new interest, but recently they've become increasingly difficult to find. However, this pile of rotting logs beside Dunrobin Castle's walled garden came up with masses. 

The logs have been here so long that one has a sapling growing out of it. Each seems to host a single fungus, this one, which I have failed to identify, resembling....

....stacked potato crisps.

At one point the crisps had grown up a small branch of the log, the uppermost forming a flower.

Another log had a similar fungus except....

....it was less toasted and rather more rubbery. Yet another log....

....boasted this rather pretty fungus, the only one I have managed to identify. It's purple jellydisc, Ascocoryne sarcoides, I think.

Up in the woodland at the back of the walled garden I found this fungus, its cap being a slightly unusual shape. Again, I haven't yet identified it.

So a walk which, in prospect, might have been damp and slightly boring became a pleasure.

A Hard Frost

We had a hard frost last night, the air temperature -3.4C at 9 this morning, and struggling to get above zero by midday except in places touched by the sun. Here, a gorse has burst into flower at a very unseasonal time.

On such cold mornings, when puddles and bird baths are frozen, this one solidly to a depth of a centimetre, the birds are desperate for water. This is a siskin, a pretty little bird which, sadly, is a rare visitor to the garden although there are flocks of them in Dunrobin woods half a mile away.

Even when one takes out a jug of hot water it's only an hour or so until the surface once again freezes over, but it's well worth the effort for the number of birds attracted for a drink.

Dusk & Dawn

This was last night's sunset, seen in a view from our house which looks out across the town's graveyard and primary school, at four yesterday afternoon, and....

....this was sunrise this morning, the picture taken just after nine.

We have the first view from both our small snug, a room we retreat to on cold winter evenings, and, more extensively, from the sun room at the southwestern end of the house. The dawn view is only visible from indoors from the stair landing, which is where the picture was taken, though the sun also pours in through the frosted glass of the upstairs bathroom. That we don't really benefit at all from the morning sun is a quirk of the history of the house. When it was built there was a working garage and repair shop on the southeast side of the house - now it's the graveyard car park - so only three windows 'look' out that way, the landing, the upstairs bathroom and the downstairs toilet.

Aspect is such an important factor in a house, one which estate agents seem to ignore since, in our experience, very few plans of houses for sale have any indication of their orientation, such as a north-south sign. 

I have live in houses whose living areas faced the sunset but three times I have lived in houses which had views eastwards - the Hoey and third Cliff Avenue houses when I was a boy in Mombasa, and Matenderere - and they taught me that to be able to start each day by watching the dawn is one of life's great privileges.

A Rocky Story

Golspie beach, along with many other local beaches, is littered with lumps of exotic rock - in the sense that they didn't originate here. This is an example, a metamorphic rock called a gneiss. To my knowledge, the nearest outcrops of this sort of rock are to the west of us or in Norway, so the only way they can have been brought in is by the ice that covered the area some 10,000 years or more ago.

As the glaciers retreated at the end of the last ice they left great piles of boulder-clay, that is, material that contained an unsorted mixture of everything from boulders to clay. The rivers that worked the land along the ice front then sorted this sediment, as rivers do, bringing many of the boulders down to the coast where the sea has been moving them around ever since. One of the characteristics of ice worn rocks is that they are angular, often having been ripped off the basement rock under the glacier as it passed. That these rocks are now relatively rounded is down to the action of waves and running water.

This is but the recent history of this rock, and a brief history at that. How the rock itself was formed is a much longer story, spanning many millions of years.

Turnstones

We walked along the beach below Dunrobin Castle again today, in part because there's a strong northwesterly blowing which is bringing in sharp showers and this beach is relatively protected. Below the thicket where we watched the blackcaps on Saturday we....

....spotted movement in the kelp washed in by the rising tide. This was a small flock of....

....turnstones, waders which we've seen before along this same section of beach. With their black bibs, bright orange legs and short, dark bills, they're relatively easy to identify. They allowed us to approach quite close before taking wing, when we counted nine of them.

Having walked well beyond the castle we made our way back through the extensive woodland that extends for a couple of miles between the beach and the A9. One of the many paths that are open to the public is one that runs along the top of the steep cliffs of an ancient coastline, where benches are provided where one can sit and enjoy the view across the Moray Firth.

Blackcaps

It's been another beautiful day today, hardly a cloud in the sky nor a breath of wind, so we took a gentle walk along the shore....

....below Dunrobin Castle where we passed a thicket mainly comprised of sea buckthorn. We've passed here many times before but today Mrs MW spotted a small bird which turned out to be our first sighting in Sutherland of....

....a male blackcap. The blackcap is a species of warbler which tends to migrate south for the winter but - so the internet tells me - blackcaps from NE Europe are increasingly spending their winters here. Their main food is insects and berries, and there are plenty of the latter still on the trees despite the attentions of other Scandinavian immigrants such as black-beaked blackbirds, redwings and fieldfares.

A little patience, and Mrs MW's sharp  eyes, produced a rather better picture of a female blackcap, whose cap is brown, feeding on elderberries. The orange berries are those of the sea buckthorn.

Calm Waters

Calm waters across Loch Fleet yesterday with a mass of widgeon feeding, the calm....

....extending out beyond the entrance to the loch, a deceptive calm as the outgoing current was very strong through the narrows, only the seals being able to swim against it.

An unhurried day, a day for standing on the water's edge, the sun low but warm, or sitting.... 

....at the top of the beach to watch the sand bars emerge and become steadily populated with sea birds.