Manoeuvres in the Moray Firth

This is the Seaway Ventus, a self-propelled jack-up vessel designed to install offshore wind turbines and their foundations, anchored off Brora on Thursday morning.

We rarely see much traffic in the Moray Firth so we were pleased this morning to wake up to....

....a warship off Tarbet Ness. She steamed across the firth towards us then ....

....turned north to pass in front of Golspie before heaving-to off the coast between Golspie and Brora.

She was the Danish command vessel Absalon and she was later joined....

 

....by a second warship, much more distant, which I was able to identify as a Royal Navy ship, HMS Portland, a Duke-class frigate.

A NATO exercise, Steadfast Noon, is due to begin tomorrow. While this is described as a two-week exercise involving, "more than 60 aircraft taking part in training flights over Western Europe," it's quite possible that the two naval ships are also taking part.

Rowans

I walked up this forest track yesterday in search of berries, in particular rowan berries as these are the favourites of the migrant birds from the north which arrive around this time - fieldfare and redwings in particular. It's early for them, but their arrival dates depend on how quickly they exhaust the berry crop in places like Scandinavia where they've spent the summer. Certainly, the crop here....

....is a good one, with many rowans sagging under the weight of their fruit.

Sadly, I didn't see anything feeding on the rowans so concentrated my enjoyment on the flowers growing in the recently-cut verges, one of which....

....is one of my favourites, the beautifully named devil's-bit scabious. Only a few of the summer's blooms are still there, fading as winter approaches, while, to my surprise, some plants....

....are just coming into flower - at this time of year! This is gorse, more and more of it bursting into its yellow blooms as winter approaches.

I walked up the track until I reached the gate in the fence which, at one time, was the boundary between the artificial forestry to the right and the wild, open moor to the left. No longer, as the open land I so loved was planted, mainly with conifer, a couple of years ago, the area fenced, and the red deer we used to watch expelled - or shot - from the new plantation.

I walked too far, but the sun was so warm, the sky blue, the wind light, and the unfolding track beckoned. Time was when I could have carried on up to the cleared clachan of Loch Lunndaidh, but not any more so, very reluctantly but sensibly, I turned back, arriving home exhausted after a two-and-a-half hour walk.

Autumn

The countryside is increasingly painted with the shades of autumn...,

....the barley has been reaped...,

....and the heathers are dying back: the ling is finished but the bell heather (above) still carries some last flowers while the cross-leaved heath looks the healthiest.

There are splashes of bright colour, the leftovers of a summer flowering, like this self-heal, while....

....in the occasional sunny intervals, the butterflies still reappear. This peacock and....

....this red admiral were on the wing last Saturday but, with a piercing wind now in the north and the temperature struggling to reach 10C, I fear these may be the last butterflies of the year.

Ties

From the time I became one of the more senior members of staff at the English schools I taught in, I felt the need to wear a suit to work, and since men's suits were expected to be dark, boring colours I used to cheer myself up with brightly-colours ties, often bought by Mrs MW from the local Oxfam shop.

So here I am at Chalvedon School in Basildon New Town with my form tutor group, I think in 1979 just before I left to go to The Park School in Rayleigh, Essex.

By the time I moved schools again, to The Plume in Maldon, my collection of brightly-coloured ties were becoming quite legendary, to the extent that, in 1988, for a reason I cannot recall, a colleague, Bernard Kerr, did a sketch which reflected....

....both my geography teaching and my taste in neckwear.

These thoughts are occasioned by a search of my wardrobe I've just carried out for an errant scarf, needed because the temperature outside isn't going to reach 10C today, when I found a little hanger which used to be jammed with ties, with just three on it: a black tie, HM Coastguard issue but kept for funerals, my Clan Gunn tie to celebrate my mother, who was a keen member of that tribe, and, for old times sakes, one of the ties I used to wear to school.

Defeat

The other day, while walking up the track which leads past our house into the forestry, I noticed a side track which climbed towards the summit of Bheinn Bhraggie. Being too late to follow it that day, we tackled it this morning in damp, cloudy conditions which....

....probably suited the fungi.

The track led steadily uphill and we persevered but, after about a kilometre, we had to admit defeat - which was so frustrating as we could see that the track veered away to the left to traverse the hill and so probably led out onto the high, open moorland that I so love.

We just don't have the energy we once had. This was not a long walk - after we returned home I could see that we had walked about three kilometres and climbed a hundred metres vertically - yet I felt utterly drained.

We stood for a time at the turning-back point and admired what views there were - this one looking roughly south towards Loch Fleet - but....

....we could see that, had we been able to climb higher, there were panoramas yet to open up.

We're old, so we really shouldn't complain that we can only manage relatively short distances these days, but whenever I am faced with a defeat like this I look back on the expeditions of which we used to be capable and wish for that life all over again.

Curlew

Mrs MW and I sat together on the bench by Dunrobin Castle this morning looking out to sea and enduring a thin drizzle. The same birds were on the rock peninsula as I saw on Thursday but one of the curlews, usually very shy, was close enough for a nervous photograph.

In the twenty-five minutes we sat there only one person passed us, a young man on his way home from working at the castle. Even the usual small band of dog-walkers seemed to have been deterred by the weather. Which was fine, as it left us in peace to relax to the swash of the waves and the plaintive call of the sea birds.

A Rocky Roost

Yesterday's view from the bench along the path to Dunrobin Castle was of a busy sky over a dead-calm sea. I sat there for at least half-an-hour and not a soul passed me, sat enjoying the warmth of the sun and the light breeze and the alone-ness, and watching....

....the structure formed of boulders that sticks out at right angles to the beach; watch it because it's a favoured congregating place for the birds that spend their time along this section of coast.

There are cormorants, many of them with white bibs which indicate they are juveniles, a grey heron (at left) and two large gulls which I think are the black-backed pair which frequented these rocks last winter.

Then there is a rather difficult-to-see flock of rock doves, part of a much bigger flock which, having wintered here last year, then went away for the summer and are only recently returned; and several other birds - oystercatchers and curlews in particular - which are not in these pictures.

I can quite understand why the birds so favour this spot at the end of the rock peninsula - it's well away from any dogs that pass along the coast path - but I do not understand why this strange structure has formed at this particular point along the coast.