Aurora and the Rut

This isn't the most memorable of the many auroras I was fortunate enough to witness in our years on Ardnamurchan, most of the event consisting of ghostly sheets of green light weaving low across the seas and islands to the north of the peninsula - until, quite suddenly, these great pillars of red started to appear over Meall Sanna. They were spectacular, yes, but they were made very special when, as if they had triggered a response, a red deer stag started to roar.

It was the rutting season and I well remember the hot, angry sound of the beast, frighteningly close behind me, in stark contrast to the icily silent spectacle playing across the skies in front.

The Blankets

Two blankets form the cover to our spare bed. They don't quite match, and we have a purple spread which would probably look rather better, but I love these two blankets, and I'm so pleased that I see them daily because they remind me of two truly beautiful people who once came into our lives.

The blankets were sent to us soon after we left Rhodesia in 1970. It had been a bitter parting because we had hoped and planned to spend our lives there, and had met and made friends with some dedicated, selfless but fun-loving people, but the country we had come to love was sliding into civil war, and we needed, for health reasons, to be back in the UK.

Bibi Witt knew how devastating the retreat had been for us. She knew we weren't looking forward to life in a cold country, and were soon in a damp, cramped ground floor flat in Bristol into which we would shortly bring our first child, so she sent us these blankets to keep us warm. The blankets, woven by local African women, wouldn't have been that cheap, and the postage must have been horrendous, but she did it out of love.

That was all many years ago yet the times we spent with Bibi and David are still fresh in our memories; and all we can add is a heartfelt 'thank you' to them for being such a rich part of the pattern of our lives.

The Fall of Leaves

Today I walked up the hill into the sunshine of a clear, cool, breathless morning, so still one could hear the brittle leaves falling in the sycamore tree; overlaying this, the birds - robin, wren, goldfinch and siskin - sang against a depth of silence.

I tire quickly now when I walk, particularly on an uphill track like this one. I reckon that I'm only capable of walking half the distance I used to manage a year ago, and my steps are much more slow. This is fine, no-one gets younger, and I am fortunate indeed still to have enough puff to take me a mile or two, far enough to remove me from human noise and give me a few minutes in which to listen to silence and the fall of leaves.

We're forecast another week of this weather.

Late Autumn Wildlife

This is what sunrise looks like at 8am from our bedroom window, a big triple-glazed window which slides open to a veranda on which, sadly, we find....

....the occasional bird which has seen sky reflected in the glass, and collided with it. This wren recovered after about a quarter of an hour but we need to put more decals on the glass to prevent these collisions happening.

In no danger of colliding with anything are these great skeins of high-flying pink-footed geese on their daily migrations from Loch Fleet to the harvested barley fields to the north of us. What we haven't yet seen are the redwing and fieldfare migrants for which....

....this year's terrific berry crop will be very welcome.

If the berry crop is prolific, the same cannot be said for the fungi, which continue to be disappointing. Blackening wax caps, like this one, are one of the few species which seem to be doing well.

There are still wildflowers to be found, like ragwort and campion, and a few insects feeding on them, including this caterpillar and the occasional bee which can still be found enjoying the verbena in our garden.

The squirrels are very busy, and we're seeing them regularly as we walk down Squirrel Alley. If you can see it, this is a young one, possibly one of this year's brood. He didn't like us getting close but, unlike the adults, he didn't head for the forestry but stayed up a tree watching until we left.

Benches

It's a sign of our age that the few outdoor benches that are scattered around the local area are increasingly important to us. Time was when, if we needed a rest, we simply sat on some convenient rock or on a clump of heather. These days, getting that far down and up again is a bit of a challenge.

Our walks are now limited to a maximum of about four kilometres - that's two-and-a-half miles in the old currency - and we usually have a walk of some sort every day of the week.

This bench overlooks the tidal pool at the entrance to Loch Fleet, a good spot for watching eider and merganser and other diving birds, as well as waders on the sand and shingle banks.

There are several other benches in this part of the National Nature Reserve but they are all within a short stagger of the car parks, a reflection of what limited distances most people walk.

These benches are in a small field at Drummuie, on the path which the Council put in which leads from the Council Offices towards the village centre. I suppose it was put in to encourage people to walk to the offices but the few souls we see along the path are, like us, residents in nearby houses.

The right-hand bench looks directly down to the A9 and two bus stops, then across the Inverness to Wick railway line and a field, then the golf course, and finally across the Moray Firth towards Easter Ross. I like sitting there watching the huge variety of traffic that passes along one of Scotland's main trunk roads. As well as traffic following the now over-popular North Coast 500 route, it carries everything bound for Sutherland, Caithness and the Orkneys.

This is my favourite bench, and I've written often enough about it. It's on the coast path north from Golspie, just before a walker reaches Dunrobin Castle. It's one of three benches scattered along this half-mile of track but the other two have subsided and tipped backwards, so are much less comfortable.

It's a great bench from which to watch a variety of shore birds and it's from this bench that I had my only two sightings of otters. The rough grassland is good for wildflowers and, thanks to them, a variety of butterflies and other insects. For example, it's one of two places around Golspie where six-spot burnets can be found.

The bench has a plaque on it, and somebody maintains it once a year. I don't know who the Hagans were, but I am very grateful to them and, presumably, their family for their thoughtfulness for I, too, love this place.

An Eagle or Not

A buzzard wheeled high above us today as we set off up the track into the coniferous plantation, following  it upwards....

....through the gate which leads out onto open moorland now planted, and soon to disappear under, yet more coniferous woodland.

We walked on beyond the gate, with....

....the view across Loch Fleet to our left and....

....the ridge that rises to the heights of Beinn Bhraggie to our right, when Mrs MW spotted....

....a raptor flying low and fast, quickly disappearing beyond the ridge line.

In the short few seconds during which the bird was visible it was difficult to determine whether it was another buzzard or an eagle. We concluded that it was an eagle on the grounds that it had a very wide wingspan, that it was flying over open moorland while the local buzzards prefer mature woodland, and that the one flap of its wings which we observed was very slow compared to a buzzard's flap. This last is, in our experience, one of the best ways of identifying an eagle, thoughts it's even easier if there is something to scale it against - such as a gull harassing it.

We'll never know whether it was an eagle or not but it would have been so good to have determined that it was, as we've yet to have a positive sighting of an eagle anywhere in Golspie or its immediate surrounds.

A Battle for the Sunflower Seeds

In the absence of almost all the other small birds from the feeders in our back garden these last few (very anxious) weeks the one bird that has stuck with us, our resident robin, has grown quite proficient at getting sunflower seeds out of their container, so you can imagine his fury when, yesterday....

....a coal tit appeared and began feeding on his sunflower seeds.

Robins are famous for their short fuses and their aggression when it comes to matters of mating and territory so....

....as can be seen in this action shot, the robin made short work of chasing the coal tit away, pursuing it until it took refuge in the deep, dark depths of some nearby gorse bushes, after which....

...the robin found a perch on one of the trees that overlooks our garden and sang loudly about its triumphs - not noticing that....

....the coal tit was back.