Littleferry Wildlife

Murky but dead calm weather took us to Littleferry this morning for a brisk walk and a hope that we'd see something interesting or unusual in the way of wildlife. As must be evident from the entries in this blog, I become more and more dejected about the state of the local wildlife, particularly at a National Nature Reserve like Littleferry.

We started by checking the pool just in from the mouth of Loch Fleet, its waters dead calm, where we spotted....

....this small flock of birds working sands recently cleaned by the falling tide. It was difficult to tell what these waders were until we got home, when the photos revealed a very heartening sight - that....

....it was a small flock of ringed plovers, a species of which we've seen little over the past few months. Sadly, they....

....weren't willing to hang around.

Near them we saw a single pair of long-tailed ducks, the female parading very obediently behind the male.

Walking out onto the long sandy beach which runs north from the mouth of Loch Fleet all the way to Golspie, we found little in the way of seaweed washed up along last night's high tide mark. In general, where there isn't much weed there isn't much in the way of resident wildlife either. This section of beach used to be good for bivalves, including big ones like otter and razor shells and Arctica, but today there were few to be found. The only things to be remarked upon were....

....a few sea potatoes in places where we used to find dozens, and an unusually large number of....

.....common whelk egg cases.

To cheer us, on our way home we spotted a small flock of curlews working one of the local farmer's fields. At this time of year these birds feed along beach tidelines, between rocky, seaweed-covered boulders, and on nearby grasslands, but shortly they'll be moving inland to breed on moorlands and peat bogs.

First Wildflowers in Bloom

The race to be the year's first true wildflower in bloom is always won by the gorse, whose flowers seem now to be out in larger and larger numbers right through the winter.

Since I don't include daffodils and snowdrops because their characters are largely human controlled, the race to be second is usually won by lesser celandine, and the best place locally to find it is....

....on the bank between Back Road - so called because it runs along the back of Golspie village - and the railway line. Happily, this morning, the....

....first flowers were out, though still slightly closed after a chilly night.

The first tree flowers are also out, in the form of hazel catkins.

In the insect world, while some small flies and midges have appeared in warmer moments, I hadn't expected to see the first bumblebee of spring but, encouraged by bright sunshine and a temperature touching 15C, one was very active on our pansies, another 'artificial' plant which flowers through the winter.

Golspie's South Beach

It's a very long time since we last walked the beach to the south of Golspie, at least in part because, since the storm of December 2023, the one access point has been closed off. This is a huge shame as this beach is promoted on the road sign on the A9 as Golspie's 'award-winning beach' - and it is, truly, a lovely beach.

The reason it was closed off is very evident. Along the section running south from the pier large parts of the concrete waterfront have been damaged - this view looks north towards Golspie - awaiting, I suppose, the multi-million pound works that are promised to protect Golspie, and the vital A9, from a future major storm surge.

Some parts of the damaged waterfront are like an archaeological dig: these wooden posts are an earlier version of the village's coastal defences, later replaced by the now-wrecked concrete barrier.

It's possible to get down to the beach by walking along the path that runs between the golf course and the beach, to a point where enough boulders have been removed to enable us to scramble down - at which point we realised we had the beach to ourselves, our only companions being....

....a flock of oystercatchers enjoying the peace and quiet.

Offshore, things were much noisier. At first we thought it was eider that were responsible for the noise but then we realised that there were also....

....a few long-tailed ducks very much involved in their noisy mating processes.

Considering the beach is now so protected from humans and their dogs I would have expected to see much more wildlife but the only other sighting of any note was this pied wagtail, which joins the skylarks and long-tailed ducks in being amongst the earliest spring migrant arrivals.

Calm After a Storm

A westerly wind blew mightily yesterday kicking up a dust storm on land and white horses across the Moray Firth and, towards evening, tearing enough holes in the clouds for some sunshine to break through. However, this was too late for the small birds, of which we saw precious few through the day, though....

....they made up for it by turning out in numbers this morning, the chaffinches arriving first followed by greenfinches, goldfinches....

....and siskins.

We walked up into forestry which was full of bird song. At one point we stood and heard dunnock, wren, chaffinch and robin all singing together. Soon we'll be listening for the song of the first returning migrants.

Golspie's Front

It's some time since I last walked along Golspie's seafront. This runs round a wide bay, with the village, and the A9 trunk road which passes through it, squeezed between the sea and the heights of Beinn Bhraggie. The northern end of the front is accessed by a grassy path while....

....the village frontage is a concrete breakwater. This is in a parlous state, with the sea frequently overtopping it - which must have happened again in the last few days judging by the piles of weed thrown up by the recent high winds.

It's a pleasant walk along the promenade and the grass path from the village to the mouth of the Golspie Burn. Considering this is a settlement of some 2,500 residents it never ceases to surprise me how few people I meet, today just one, a lady walking - or, rather, being dragged along by - her rather plump terrier.

The tide was low, the exposed seaweed-covered boulders being a gathering place for various birds including three species of gull, oystercatchers and crows. The bird swimming just offshore in this picture is a lone male eider.

One of gulls, perhaps a black-backed gull, lay washed up on the beach. Happily, there's still no sign of bird flu here so I assume this is a victim of a long winter.

Capturing the Moment

This post is another one written in praise of, and thanksgiving for, that wonderful invention called a digital camera. I have never had any interest in the complications of photography - I really don't know what an f-number is - I just want a machine that I can point, press a button, and know I've recorded a visual moment in time - and nowhere is the ability to record something very, very quickly more important than when one is 'on safari' in places like Tanzania.

I'm rather proud of this first picture as the hippo had seemed quite happy watching from the bank as we passed in a very fragile small boat. However, it suddenly decided to launch itself into the water. I was quite convinced that it was going to attack our boat and turn it over. Happily, it didn't.

This sparring between two gazelle happened in moments but the camera was ready so all I did was press a button. I don't think it was a serious fight but, whereas the gazelle would normally have fled the approach of a Land Rover full of camera-swinging tourists, these were too engrossed to notice us.

This wart hog boar had been warily watching our approach and I had him lined up for a nice photograph, when he transformed it by rearing away just as I pressed the button. Wart hogs aren't particularly beautiful animals but I have a soft spot for them, knowing that they are the favourite prey of lions - yet, somehow, they survive and thrive.

I had seconds in which to turn my camera on and grab a shot of this, a bush pig. Considering the success of wart hogs as a species, bush pigs are surprisingly rare - I had never seen one before - and yet it walked past within ten metres of me as I watched from a hide which overlooked the water hole at the lodge in Sadaani National Park.

Finally, this is an unbelievable photo - again, taken from the hide at Saadani - because when I showed it to the lady who ran the lodge she couldn't believe that an old, male Cape buffalo, one of the most respected of Africa's range of dangerous creatures, had come for a drink not a hundred metres from where her clients were relaxing in the lodge's restaurant and bar.

The Field

A large field near our house has been the home of a small herd of cows through the winter. They had a pretty hard time with the snow, and the farmer had considerable problems in bringing supplementary feed up when, in the heavy rain of a few weeks ago, the access track was largely washed away. Despite this, the animals seem....

....to have survived remarkably well, and we rather enjoy meeting the calves which now accompany their mothers.

However, in the last few days we have noticed some additional users of the field, a small flock of....

....redwings. I tend to think of redwings as arriving early in the winter to gorge on berries, particularly those of the ubiquitous rowan and of the sea buckthorn, of which there are large numbers along the coast path near Dunrobin Castle. However, this year the berries, despite looking like a good crop, disappeared very quickly, so the redwings seem to have taken instead to feeding in the cows' field, presumably on worms. 

The field is also being exploited by a close relative of the redwing, the song thrush. There appear to be a large number of these birds this year: we even have one in the trees at the front of our house, a bird which, like the others, seems to be working himself up into the crescendo of song which comes with the breeding season.