Flora and Fauna

Flowers

Among the many and more beautiful of our common wild flowers that grow beside the Tweed are the marsh marigold, or kingcup, loosestrife, purple and yellow, ragged robin and devil's-bit scabious.

The beautiful and rare include seven orchids: the purple dactylorrhiza - illutrated here, northern marsh and twayblade (in damp meadows and woods}; lesser twayblade (on heather moors); heath spotted (on acid soil); bird's nest (in beechwoods).

Birds

It would be rather strange if anyone with a knowledge of birds were to stroll along the Tweed for, say, an hour and fail to spot either sandpiper or oyster-catcher or grey (but bright yellow-chested) wagtail or dipper (paddling, immersed, upstream for caddis-fly grubs) or the handsome goosander drake or duck.

From June to August one might, with less than amazing luck, see the duck (but not the drake - the drake has absconded) leading a flotilla of up to twelve ducklings buffeting themselves like mad against the current; a memorable- sight. Buzzards can be relied on to appear, usually at a great height, mewing.

Short-eared owl, peregrine falcon, sparrow-hawk and kestrel are also often seen. And from autumn to spring great flocks of geese, pink-footed and greylag, fly from and back to the frozen north, spread against the sky in arrowhead or zig-zag order and calling to each other as they go. They too are unlikely to be overlooked.

Mammals

Grey squirrels have arrived. But the red squirrel still hold their own in many a detached wood, as do fox, badger and roe deer. The otter has returned to colonise old haunts.