Red Squirrels

With a miserable morning first thing we didn't set out on our walk until after eleven, and as we headed up the hill towards Golspie Tower it was still spitting. George - that's George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Marquess of Stafford, who lives on the top of Beinn Bhraggie - was in and out of cloud, but across one of the fields of Golspie Tower farm that he created out of an historic clachan's land we were being watched....

....by a roe deer - just visible in the first picture. The deer was being remarkably bold as a high wall, a big field and a fence separated her from the woodland below Beinn Bhraggie and we were between her and the woodland of Golspie Glen, but we've notice deer before feeding in these fields, quite unconcerned by passing cars and only a little worried by rare pedestrians.

From Golspie Tower we returned via Golspie Glen, down cycle tracks and paths devoid of any fellow walkers. The purpose of this route was to look for red squirrels.

When we first came here we were told that there were no squirrels, grey or red, north of Loch Fleet, but someone we've met several times on our walks told us the other day that a breeding population was being released....

....around the skating pond in the Glen, so we went for a look.

I now know, from The Northern Times of 20th October, that, "Around 20 squirrels, taken from healthy populations elsewhere, will be released next month and in February to woods at Ben Bhraggie and Dunrobin."

That's excellent news, something else for us to look out for on our walks, but November does seem a strange month to be releasing them, with a whole long winter for them to survive.

Orchids

There is now a 'page' of this blog dedicated to wild orchids, my favourite British wildflower. It's here.

Hermit Crabs

A few days ago we found these tracks imprinted on the sands of a small section of the beach by Coul Links - see earlier post here. At the time we did think they might be crab tracks and this was confirmed when we were last at Littleferry when, in the water just below the jetty, we spotted....

....the same tracks and, busy making them, a hermit crab.

Now excuse my ignorance but I always thought that hermit crabs were very much tropical crustaceans. We used to play with them as boys on the sandy beaches of Mombasa, each selecting a crab for a race which consisted of putting the competitors into the centre of a circle and waiting to see which one reached the edge first. It was a game that sometimes took a long time.

A few minutes' research shows that several species of hermit crab are to be found in British waters but the most common is Pagurus bernhardus, the common hermit crab, though there are also the south claw hermit crab, Diogenes pugilator, and Leach’s hermit crab, Pagurus prideauxi - see the British Sea Fishing website, link here. I assume that the crab we saw was the common one.

Ferry Woods

We parked the car this morning along the road to Littleferry and followed a - to us - new path into Ferry Woods, which should have brought us straight onto the links. The path rose and fell across a series of low ridges separated by....

....open 'valleys' covered in moss, lichen and ling. These features seem to me to be old storm beaches, the ridges of coarse shingle, the valleys sandier, deposited by the sea parallel to the coast in the 10,000 years or so since the last ice age.

As expected, the path brought us to the links, separated from them by an area of gorse (locally called whin) and, unfortunately, an old barbed wire fence which is only broken in a few places. Once through it and across the links, we found....

....the tide high and eating at the sand of the coastline.

So we walked the links southwards towards Littleferry, passing these trees, all that remain of a copse which once included a few palms of some sort, leading to the nearby section of beach being referred to as Palm Beach.

We re-entered the woods much further south and headed back parallel to the ridges, finding dead trees which were probably deciduous and the last remains of such woodland as there might have been before the monotonous and rather dark pine forestry was planted.

The fungi that have been 'in bloom' over the last few weeks are over their best, this one looking about as old as, at times, I feel.

Small Bird News

This is the graveyard robin perched on the end of the wall that separates his territory from the town playing field, from where he can look over our fence to....

....a bird table which belongs to the garden robin. Given a chance, the graveyard robin will nip across the no-man's land of the public road and grab a quick snack but woe betide him if he's seen by the garden robin. In fact, the garden robin is probably the nastiest robin we've come across. Not only does he chase other robins but also....

....dunnocks, the most self-effacing of small birds.

He'll also have a go at the sparrows but they have the advantage of numbers - thank goodness, not yet as high as at the beginning of the year.

The coal tits also like this little bird table, which is stocked every lunchtime so we can watch the fun while we eat, but they are wary of the sparrows. Sadly, the number of coal tits has fallen - we're now down to two - but the number of....

....other tits has remained high. We counted five blue tits at one time in the back garden recently, and three great tits. We also have a fairly steady supply of green finches, up to three at a time, chaffinches, blackbirds and the very occasional....

....goldfinch. After this one visited us we rushed out and bought....

....a big packet of nyjer, which is supposed to be a goldfinch's favourite food, since when we haven't seen a single one, though the blue tits will, occasionally, take a few nyjer seeds, as if they're a bit sorry for us. All of which is very frustrating as, when we are out on our walks, we not infrequently see....

....'charms' of goldfinches feeding off ordinary, common grass seeds - these ones were at Littleferry.

Littleferry Again

We were at Littleferry again this morning, walking through the forestry along the shore of Loch Fleet with the tide high and several seals visible, though little else of great note. One of the seals surprised us by making a repeated noise, a cross between a hoarse dog barking and an old man gargling.

We came through to Littleferry itself, spending some time on the stone jetty enjoying the views and the sunshine as the tide picked up speed with the ebb. Then, walking back though the hamlet we spotted....

....this building, which we recognised immediately having seen a similar one at Fascadale on Ardnamurchan. It's an ice house, built in the early years of the 19th century to preserve salmon caught, presumably, before the causeway at the Mound cut off Loch Fleet from the River Fleet. At Fascadale there were extensive fields used to trap water to freeze for the ice: there's nothing similar at Littleferry, so perhaps the ice was, somehow, imported.

Fungi were, once again, one of the highlight of our walk. This one, slightly chewed, is cup-shaped and about 2cm across but I haven't yet been able to identify it. I had expected something so distinctive to be easy but its absence from the more straightforward websites suggest it might be a little unusual.

This fungus seems to have a down-covered cap and, at first sight, looked like a puffball but, now that I'm trying to be a little serious about these fungi, I....

....did something I really don't like doing, I pulled it up to look at the underside - which immediately proved it was a gill, not a puffball. Not that this has helped much as, once again, I haven't identified it with any certainty.

Maybe I should stop worrying about identity and, instead, simply celebrate the amazing variety of fungi and, very often, their startling beauty. Yet.... well, I really would like to know what this one is.

Views Across Two Firths

This was the view due south from the old trackway below Dunrobin Castle on a warm morning with a stiff southerly folding patterns into the clouds. The dark land lying along the horizon is the far side of the Dornoch Firth.

A view slightly more to the southeast looks beyond, to a coastline which isn't visible except on the clearest of days - not necessarily the sunniest - on the south side of the Moray Firth, along by towns such as Nairn and Forres. A closer look at the area in the bottom right of the picture reveals both coastlines, with....

....Tarbat Ness lighthouse on the nearer and the Cairngorms beyond the further. The wind farm visible on the skyline is called Paul's Hill, which has 28 turbines.