Wormholes

They're best seen on a rising tide, when its first waves wash up across sand which has been exposed for some hours, when a surface which looked perfectly smooth suddenly....

....comes out in what looks like very nasty spots. Some of the holes resemble small volcanoes or pustules, perhaps two to three centimetres across, some occur in lines or in carefully spaced meshes, some are larger and randomly spaced, while others....

....occur in neat pairs. When the sea first washes over them these ones emit large bubbles which last for a few seconds then stop, and when the sea runs back the holes have disappeared, as if whatever is resident in them was caught napping and took a moment or two to block their holes and stem the flood.

These larger paired holes sometimes occur in ragged lines. The groups of holes are also well spaced, as if their residents don't enjoy neighbours. Some parts of the beach have no holes while others are covered in them.

I assume they are worm holes, perhaps with different species of worms in residence. 'I assume' but, in a quiet way, I'd quite like to know, not because I don't like mysteries but because otherwise these holes will represent yet another vast area of Nature about which I will probably now never know anything.

Farmstead NC800004 - 3

The Sutherland Estate records of the early years of the 19th century list all the Estate's townships so it might be possible to discover the name of the farmstead and whether it was part of Strathlunndaidh.

The lists include an Achlunndaidh. The name suggests it is on or close to Loch Lunndaidh. Nick Lindsay writes that, "Strathlunndaidh and Achlunndaidh were part of the wadset held by John Fraser from 1802 to 1816, when he appears to have gone bankrupt and had to relinquish it back to the estate."

This evidence strongly suggests that Achlunndaidh may be NC800004, particularly as it is evident that NC800004 had only one dwelling and Achlundaidh in the Estate records had only one tenant in 1808, while Strathlundaidh had twelve.

There is a further point: 'ach' in Gaelic means 'field', possibly a reference to the number of fields around NC800004.

Achlunndaidh and Strathlunndaidh are both marked on Margaret Wilson Grant's map*, which was drawn from Estate records. Strathlunndaidh is marked about 0.5km SE of its true location while Achlunndaidh is shown as being at the NW end of Loch Lunndaidh. In fairness to her, she does state that the positions are approximate.

A few minutes spent on the satellite image of the area shows that there is no sign of any cultivation in the area that Margaret Grant has her 'Achlundy' so it still seems possible that NC800004 is Achlunndaidh.

* in 'Golspie's Story', 1977.

Birds Along the Shore

We walked south along a very quiet beach this morning watching the few waders visible exploiting the opportunities of a falling tide, seeing oystercatchers, redshanks (left), turnstones (right) and....

....ringed plovers., but....

....came back along the golf course where the skylarks have been busy for some weeks. The males have established their territories so all the chasing around that was going on was probably for the benefit of the later-arriving females.

Our morning was made, however, when we spotted these two running along the path in front of us. It was a pair of wheatears, the greyer male at top left and the female at bottom right.

It's wonderful to see them as they, like the swallows, are one of the true long-distance migrants, having spent their winter in Central Africa. Most migrate north to their summer breeding grounds in northern and western Britain. Our experience on Ardnamurchan was that, like the skylarks, the males arrived first to establish their territories....

....but these two must have arrived at almost the same time.

Like the stonechats they raced us along the sea wall watched....

....by the stonechat pair that have been here all winter. They can't have been too pleased at the arrival of competition.

Walking

We try to take a good walk every day, whatever the weather, on the premise that the weather is only a factor if one doesn't have the right kit - and we do. Golspie excels in the variety of walking it offers, whether it be the long, empty strand of south beach....

....or. our favourite, the wide spaces of Sutherland's hills, or....

....the many paths and tracks which wind through Golspie's Big Glen and the local forestry.

What research we've done suggests that, along with varied nutrition, basic hygiene, a decent night's sleep, and some form of mental stimulation, daily exercise is key to a healthy lifestyle. Our most recent research, care of 'New Scientist', suggest that we need upward of 10,000 steps a day to keep ourselves physically fit by walking, so we now have an app that counts our paces. It tells us that, on today's walk, we took 9,127 steps to cover 3.40 miles, though this takes no account of the vertical distance we climbed.

One of the joys of walking in an area like this is that it encourages sleep and provides the mental exercise we need, be it as simple as asking the question 'what pollinates gorse?' - because there never seems to be an insect anywhere near it. Walking also offers the pleasure of spotting....

 ....the first bloom of a spring flower, like, today, this wood anemone, and often....

....provides something which needs research when we get home, like his scat which may, or may not be, pine marten.

If there's one thing I dread it is losing the ability to take a good walk. The prospect of prolonged confinement within four walls fills me with horror.

Small Bird Report

We continue to welcome new visitors to our garden, including a very pretty pair of collared doves who, as one would expect, spend a great deal of time canoodling, as my father would have put it. They, and many of the other birds, are drawn to the garden by the bird bath which, to be honest, is a bit deep for the smaller ones to bathe in.

Some of the birds are now regular visitors, including, we are happy to report, at least one pair of greenfinches. This is the male, who is suitably green: the female is so pale that, at times, she might be mistaken for a female chaffinch.

This feeder is one of my constructions and was highly unpopular with many of the birds - until we removed the pink top and replaced it with a brown one. It appears that small birds don't like pink.

Many of the birds are now such regular visitors that we recognise individuals, and some are only occasional, like this coal tit who first appeared a few days ago and then wasn't seen again until today.

The starlings continue to be a pain, arriving in numbers and demolishing any food they can get their beaks on, but one cannot begrudge them a bath, which is carried out with considerable vigour.

However, we do draw the line when the local seagulls start using it, particularly as they have joined the group of birds who are 'persona non grata', mainly from the noise they make - it is an exciting time of year for them - and for their habit of dancing on the roof immediately above our bedroom when we're trying to sleep.

However, the biggest pains are two species of the crow family. The jackdaws pillage everything they can get at, attacking the feeders and squeezing their necks through the wire to steal the food put out for the ground-feeding birds. They're intelligent, and if there weren't so many of them and they weren't so greedy, would be interesting to watch. However, if they are a nuisance, they're nothing compared....

....to these bruisers, the local rooks. To the jackdaws' intelligence they add the brute force of their massive bills, using them to knock bird feeders off the branches where they're hanging, picking up and casting aside the wire covers and generally poking their noses into places they're not wanted. To make matters worse, there are so many of them: at time there can be upwards of twenty jackdaws and half-a-dozen rooks in the field adjoining the house. It's like being besieged!

Farmstead NC800004 - 2

Our second visit to the farmstead area to the north of the Drummuie to Loch Lunndaidh track - saw us armed with a satellite picture of the area - see earlier post here - which showed the location of an unusual, elongate building. It was as well we had this as, without it....

....we would never have found the structure. It runs along the hillside on an almost east-west axis, sloping slightly downwards to the east, with a ditch along its northern side to lead away any water running downhill. The interior of the building is a mere 3m wide, the walls up to a metre thick, and its full length some 41 metres, divided into four 'rooms'.

Of these, the westernmost room is most clearly visible, its walls picked out by growths of heather. It measures 13m by 3m, and has a door on its south side where Mrs MW is sitting. From it....

....there is a fine view away to the south, to Loch Fleet. We have noticed before that our ancestors enjoyed a view - the local hut circles we've visited all had good views.

This sort of elongate building is typical of some local pre-Clearance farm houses, where one of the 'rooms' was used by the family and the others acted as byres and store-houses. What is unusual, perhaps, is that this farmstead was outwith the township, the other buildings of Strath Lundie being about a kilometre away.

Oystercatchers

There are twelve species in the oystercatcher genus Haematopus which, between them, are found along almost all the coastlines of the world, and some have adapted to life inland along waterways. The local species, the Eurasian oystercatcher, H. ostralegus, is amber-listed in the UK as almost half of the European oystercatcher population over-winter in the UK and, for reasons that are now known, numbers have been falling, particularly in Scotland.

Despite their name, oysters aren't important on their menu: they feed mainly on bivalves such as cockles and mussels, crustaceans such as crabs, and worms for which they probe into the sand or, if they're feeding in fields, earth. To break in to shellfish, some have shorter bills which they use to hammer through the shell, while others have longer ones which they use to pry the two sides of the shell apart.

We've seen up to fifty along the coast between Golspie and Littleferry but the numbers vary considerably, though there is hardly a day when we don't see any oystercatchers along the beach. In bad weather they favour the grass areas along the Golspie seafront or the golf course, where they search for earthworms. They operate singly or in small flocks of up to twenty or so birds.

They allow us to approach to within about 20 metres before they take off, emitting their very characteristic peep-ing call.