The Calm

We have blue skies and light breezes, the calm before tonight's storm, due to start in the next couple of hours or so, and in this brief sunny interlude two butterflies are in our garden, a red admiral enjoying the verbena and....

....what I assume is the same painted lady as has graced our garden in the brighter spells of the last eighteen days.

Red Sky Dawn

"Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning...." the adage goes, so this fiery sunrise, seen at seven this morning, may rightly predict a stormy day, with the weather forecasters suggesting we might see gusts of 67mph and more.

How much damage will occur along local coastal defences weakened after last winters's storms will depend on several factors: the wind speed, its direction - easterly, almost straight in onto the Golspie shore - and tide height, forecast at 4m at 2.30pm today following the recent full moon. Fortunately, the highest wind speeds don't coincide with high tide.

In the picture surf can be seen breaking offshore, probably on an extensive sand bank running parallel to the beach to the south of Golspie. We've seen how the sea here moves sand on and off the beach: at present, the local beaches are rather short of sand, as they have been through most of the summer. This is important, as beaches help protect the coastline during storms.

In the distance to the right can be seen the light of the Tarbat Ness lighthouse. This was completed in 1830 by Robert Stevenson, grandfather of the author Robert Louis Stevenson. The light flashes four times with a repeat every 30 seconds.

Colours

Judging by the colours in some of the trees, we might be in Canada for their 'fall', these wonderful colours being reflected in....

....the same painted lady who, along with her lone companion peacock, was once again enjoying our verbena. Nor were our flowers short of....

....other flying insects, including bees, hover flies, and day-flying moths, this small bumblebee enjoying one of three lavender bushes we've planted.

Every day, high above us, a thousand or more noisy pink-footed geese move back and forth from Loch Fleet to the fields they've selected to feed on that day. At a lower level, we've had....

....buzzards and red kites, this buzzard wheeling hopefully this morning above the field which contains the most rabbits.

While there's a robin every hundred metres or so, each vocally guarding its territory, there are otherwise hardly any garden birds. We are told by a neighbour who, like us, spends money of bird food, that this is a cheap time of year, that, once winter comes in with a bite, the birds will be back again.

The Surfer

It's Thursday, so it's the morning for my usual walk north from the village, crossing the Golspie Burn before following the coast path northwards towards Dunrobin Castle - and what a beautiful morning for a walk, on a perfect autumn day with hardly a breath of wind and the sun finding gaps in the clouds to spotlight the leaf colours in the deciduous trees. However, turn the opposite way and....

....there's a heavy swell coming in from the southeast, big waves with wide, smooth gaps between them lifting to smash against coastal defences which were sorely tried last winter.

Of course, where there is a good set there's bound to be....

....a surfer. He must have been sufficiently pleased with the waves - the tide was rising, with high in another hour's time - to have summoned his friends, as another surfer was arriving as I passed him again, still working the waves, on my way home.

Farlary

We haven't been for a walk on Farlary Croft since September 2023. Normally, we'd be up there two or three times during the summer, always returning home with a camera full of photographs. That the gap has been so big is down to the medical problems with my leg, which is now almost completely healed - so a beautiful morning yesterday found us driving up into the Sutherland hills.

The croft is one of several in the Farlary township but is unique in that the crofter has spent money on developing an extensive network of trails for visitors to follow. There is no entry fee, there's a car park, a number of picnic tables, and miles of carefully-developed paths, yet we find we usually have the walks to ourselves - as we did yesterday. 

That we'd been away for some time was evident in the number of new features - like this lochan, one of three new ones, all a bit bare at the moment - but the one thing the crofter evidently enjoys is his trees - some of which are very unusual species - as can be seen....

....around this little lochan, developed some years ago. We almost always make use of the blue picnic bench as it is in the sun during the mornings, and this is a good site for dragonflies - in their season.

The croft is usually rich with wildlife but this is a time of year when the summer migrant birds have departed, the winter immigrants haven't yet arrived, and the residents are making good use of their absence. So yesterday I took hardly any wildlife pictures except for some of this rather fine fungus.

As we descend from the main network of paths in the upper part of the croft we come down this little glen to where there is a stone bench which, because it is beautifully sheltered and south-facing, is always a warm place to sit and relax.

Our grateful thanks to the crofter for the pleasure access to his croft has given us over recent years.

Summer Again!

I had thought that summer was over, that last Thursday's peacock and red admiral were the last butterflies we would see this year, but the sun came out this morning, the temperature soared to 14C, the bees were busy on the remaining heather flowers....

....a grey wagtail, which should have gone south long ago, was seen hunting insects around the edges of our pond - now refilled after drying out in the summer 'drought' - and.... 

....suddenly the butterflies were out, a single peacock and....

....the lone painted lady who has graced our garden with her presence over the last fortnight.

Loch Fleet Fungi

We walked in the pine plantation along the banks of Loch Fleet yesterday looking for fungi and were not disappointed in their numbers - so this might be a good year for them. However....

....both there are elsewhere they've been variously rotted, broken, chewed up and degraded. Some of the damage looks like the work of slugs and snails but much of it isn't. So even....

....the best specimens are rarely perfect.

I still don't want to try to identify them but can't help it. Some I'm reasonably sure of - like, this is a brittlegill - but others defeat me, like...

....these, relatively undamaged, beauties. We've found them in the same woods before, just in one place, and couldn't identify them then.

This was about the most undamaged one we found, its colour even more rich chestnut than seen in the picture. The underside of the cap and the stalk are the same colour, so it should be easy to identify.

This may be meadow coral fungus. It's very similar to yellow stag horn but it caught my attention because, unlike the others, it was found out in the open grassland of the links.