A Ship, a Ship!

It's been a truly beautiful day today with hardly a cloud in the sky and the temperature soaring above 12C so we walked along the beach this morning finding little to excite until we spotted....

....a ship hull down on the horizon. Now this was exciting as big ships don't, in general, come anywhere near us - I think we've seen two in the time we've been here. The AIS website tells me it was....

....the Bravewind, a highly specialised ship designed for carrying bulky cargoes like parts for the many wind turbines currently being erected in the North Sea.

What a difference to the general cargo ships of my youth which carried everything from beer to cars to grains. This is the Arbitrator on which I worked my passage out to Cape Town on my way to Southern Rhodesia in 1963.

As if this excitement wasn't enough for one day, when we returned home a tortoiseshell was sunning itself on the wall. Summer must, at last, be here.

An Incoming Tide

A grey tide was sliding in across the sand flats at Littleferry this morning....

....its steady rise confining these waders - two oystercatchers, two redshanks and a ringed plover - to the last islands of diminishing exposed rocks and....

....chasing others up the beach.

As it funnelled through the entrance to Loch Fleet it washed in rafts of....

....eider, the only birds present in any numbers, content to ride the flood unless....

....disturbed, when they took to the air, flying briefly to land a short distance away.

We walked for two hours with only one other couple visible along a mile of beach and little to excite in the way of wildlife. The only thing remarkable was this trace of past activity, about five inches across, a hole and a sinuous trail that petered out, left by a mystery animal.

Tropical Birds

One tends to think that tropical countries like Tanzania, a country which has over 1,100 bird species and where this weaver bird was photographed, have a monopoly on....

....bright colours in their birds as well as....

....some pretty weird ones, but sitting at breakfast this morning we had a visit from....

....a male bullfinch in all his courting glory, and one realises that there are some very spectacular birds amongst the 600+ species we have on these small islands.

The male was on the birdbath just by our kitchen window, not five metres from us and not bothered at all by my moving to take his portrait, but his lady was rather shier, preferring the safety of a nearby bramble.

The Meadow Pipit

Last week a number of these small birds were running around the grassy area next to our house and I guessed - and I'm now rather more certain - that they were meadow pipits. They're no longer running around, all but one having moved on to the upland areas where they're going to spend their summer. This one has been left behind and....

....has come to live in our garden. It spends much of its time with the sparrows who, rather unusually, seem to tolerate it, but what interests me is that it's adopted a sparrow diet. Meadow pipits are supposed to be insect eaters - hence the thin, sharp beak - but this one is obviously adaptable and, because there's plenty of seed around, is doing rather well.

My worry is the it's a bit naive, running around in the open, and rather slow to dive into a bush when an alarm is called, so I'm rather afraid that it may become a sparrowhawk meal.

We saw one of these yesterday. Each time a goldfinch appears - and, fortunately, they only appear occasionally - my blood pressure goes up because I've invested in a large packet of niger to try to persuade them into the garden, and they've consistently ignored my generosity. None of the other birds seem interested so.... has anyone any suggestions for an alternative use for niger?

Birds Along the Shore

The tide has advanced far enough for the beach south of Golspie to be accessible for our morning walk, a beach which is still missing a fair proportion of the sand it had this time a year ago, but enough....

....for the waders to begin their search for a nesting site, although it'll be even more difficult this year to find somewhere secure from the passing dogs. So we saw oystercatchers....

....and ringed plovers and, to the right camouflaged by the clump of seaweed, what looked like a pair of turnstones.

As we walked skein after skein of pink-footed geese passed overhead, most heading north but some, confused, simply flying in circles....

....while out to sea hundreds of eider dived in unison, surfacing to find the predatory gulls ready to attack them.

As we walked back the sky clouded and we passed through a brief snow shower, carried by a bitterly cold Arctic airstream. This is April yet last night the temperature fell to -3C and we woke once again to snow on the ground.

A Horse Chestnut Seat

Around a hundred metres back from the Golspie coastline there's a sudden steep incline, the remains of an ancient cliff cut when sea level was higher - or the land was lower. Trees at the top of this are battered by any easterly gale and even heathy ones can become casualties, as happened to the one on the left of this picture which....

....was literally torn up by the roots. However, trees are loath to give up. The original trunk is now covered in moss while a new, and very healthy trunk grows vertically from it, and....

....several more small trunks are growing out of a newly invigorated and wonderfully complex root system.

This particular tree only came to our notice because, at our age, we welcome the occasional stop for a sit down and rest even on a day like today when there's still a bitter northwesterly blowing, there are frequent snow flurries, and the air temperature hasn't managed to struggle above 3C.

So this tree, with its numerous, nicely moss-cushioned seats at various levels, was very welcome, particularly as it was evident that, despite the continuing cold weather, the tree, and many others in the Dunrobin forestry, was beginning to burst into leaf.

From the dried nuts left from last year we think it's a horse chestnut - a very obliging horse chestnut.

Small Confusions

The small birds are now in full mating finery, like this male chaffinch who was singing his heart out in Dunrobin woods this morning, carefully perching by a birch which matched his breast feathers. However, his song wasn't a normal chaffinch song but confusingly like that of a willow warbler. These little birds are back from their migration to the savanna lands south of the Sahara as are the chiff-chaffs, the latter now very audible in the local woods. In due course I may have a picture of them but they are, as the saying goes, very small and elusive brown jobs.

For the latter part of the winter, perhaps because of the sparrow hoards, the greenfinches seemed to avoid the garden though their harsh call could be heard in the nearby woodland, but now they're back, the male very pretty while....

....the female is much drabber. To add to my confusion we're also seeing more....

....siskins, the males in their finery very like the greenfinches but smaller.