Bringing back memories on a trip over the Struie

LAST week I took the high road over the Struie between Alness and Bonar Bridge on the A836.

I was on my way to Bonar Bridge to pick up some sika deer venison and, as with many other Highland roads, it brought back many memories.

I can never go on this road without recalling one of my first memories of the Highlands which was with bats. Now it may seem odd to associate that area with bats but I had to go and check on some bat boxes that were erected there in some Forestry Commission plantations.

These bat boxes resemble bird boxes but instead of a hole for an entrance there is a narrow gap at the bottom front of the box. Behind the gap the wood is serrated cross-wise to give the bats some purchase to get in.

I was amazed at the boxes as they were in clumps of four at two levels on the main trunk. They were some of the very first bat boxes in the UK and the idea of the placing was to see if the bats preferred any height or direction.

I never did see any results of that experiment but can recall that I saw no sign of any bats using them.

Much more recently was the public hide erected by the Forestry Commission on the east side of the Struie road and overlooking the nest and territory of a pair of hen harriers. I can still recall the superb pale grey male bird flying into the nest with food for the female and young chicks.

There was another fascinating record for that road as, in the southern part, there is a large parking area close to a burn and there always used to be a small flock of snow buntings there in the winter. That wide burn also supported a dipper although on my recent visit there was no sign of any birds.

Another memory is further north on that road, as I was once taken to a small river where there were some fossil fish beds and I actually saw some fossils – no doubt they are still there.

Also, at the Edderton junction many years ago, a small corner shop had a display of corn dollies in the window. I thought they were for decoration but no, they were for sale, and I eventually tracked down who made them and many of the corn dollies in our house at present are from that source.

Sadly, as far as I am aware, there is only one person currently making corn dollies in the whole of the north of Scotland and she lives near Aberdeen.

Despite all these memories the one aspect that goes back even further is the Struie as a drove road. Cattle would have been driven here from the north, even parts of Sutherland and the whole of Caithness.

The current Ordnance Survey map marks where the drovers stopped overnight, the Drove Stance. Further north on the Struie the current private house at Aultnamain was once a Drover’s Inn.

In the “Bible” on such matters, A R B Haldane’s book The Drove Roads of Scotland published in 1952, the loose-leaf map at the back shows the building as Ault-na-Main.

Would the drovers have left their cattle, with someone to guard them, at the stance a few miles away and resorted to the inn? We shall never know – but one thing is certain, the cattle in those days were smaller than their modern counterparts and, of course, mainly black!

Incongruous mergansers spotted on the coast

Record of the week must go down to the red-breasted mergansers at Burghead last week.

There were two adult males on their own and then a pair, and all feeding not far off the shore where the windy, restless sea formed foam as it hit the rocky shoreline.

For some reason the mergansers looked rather incongruous. They were amidst a large number of birds such as eider, common scoters and a few long-tailed ducks. Perhaps it was their conspicuous plumage with the wispy crests and long, thin red beaks of the males but they did not seem to fit in to my eyes.

Admittedly in the summer months I am used to seeing these ducks on inland waters where they nest on the ground. However, in the winter they do spend time on the coasts.

The breeding pairs in Scotland amount to around 2,000 of the estimated 2,500 pairs in the UK, so the Scottish population is very significant. However, this is augmented by small numbers of breeding birds from Iceland that reach Scotland during the autumn and remain until March.

Unfortunately, this species comes into conflict with fisheries over their supposed affect on fish stocks. The result is that many are killed (legally and illegally) and there are indications that numbers may be declining.