Changing Attitudes

One of my favourite spots is a mysterious ruin perched high above the North Sea. Once a place of intrigue and secrecy, it is now the haunt of the peregrine and the kittiwake. Many years ago, I watched puffins from its vantage point but they too have gone.

On the approach road, I saw a shifting huddle of grey shapes beside a wee loch

Pink footed geese

Pink-footed geese, resting on their northerly migration, they were wary of my presence and ready to take to flight at a close approach. Scores of them, with others flying in to join the flock, pecked and grazed the rough pasture.

The path to the castle is steep and the entrance is not for those with vertigo but, once across the rocky bridge, it is a pleasant place to relax in the sunshine and keep an eye on the coastal shipping.

Stretched out on the grass, I heard a low crooning sound over the lap and splash of the sea. Edging to the remains of the ramparts, I saw the source of the sounds, a small colony of grey seals and pups on the rocky shore hundreds of feet below. Safe, below two hundred feet of sheer cliff and guarded from the sea by boulders and reefs, they were sleeping and resting and singing to each other in a gentle lowing.

Once seen, unreasonably, as a pest by fishermen for competing for what was then a plentiful resource, they are now, in leaner times, seen as an asset, when fishing has been replaced by eco-tourism and visitors will pay to catch a glimpse the local fauna in its natural habitat.

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamtur in illis

Bridging the gap

Cliff-top view

There has been a gap in my ancestry, indeed, in everyone’s, of which I’ve been totally unaware. Fortunately, it’s now being filled and right on my doorstep.

It seems that 360 to 345 million years ago some of our ancestors, those that survived one the extinction events that seem to occur from time to time, dragged themselves out of the sea and took up residence on land but nobody had much idea about them as there was a gap in the fossil record, the so-called Romer’s gap. I only know this from the local newspaper because it appears that the gap has been filled by fossils found right here in the cliffs and river beds. A paleontological breakthrough.

Descent

There was nothing for it but to go and have a look for myself. Beautiful day, beautiful views and a charming little fishing village but after scrambling precariously about on the shale slopes then almost getting marooned by the incoming tide, I drew a blank. A couple of rocks that looked like sea plant fossils …maybe… but nothing exciting, but then I’m not an expert and even they haven’t been able to find any until recently, hence the “gap”.

Fossils?

Coming home was more productive. Skeins of geese were honking their way north along the coast, a flock of goldeneye, several females with a male in attendance, rested just offshore. Presumably they were heading in the same direction.

Goldeneye

Primrose and celandine on the braes and speedwell in the field edges were opening to the sun.

The local cormorants are getting their white breeding plumage on. They are the masters of air and water but as clumsy on land as those first tetrapods must have been when they first waddled ashore in “gap” years of the Tournasian era.

I must go back and have another look though LotH has reminded me to take my mobile phone…..just in case.