Catkins

A routine walk to get the paper was elevated by these catkins (and the heron). I think they are hazel catkins or possibly alder.
My Gaelic word for the day is feòrag, squirrel. And grey squirrel is apparently feòrag ghlas which because it is lenited means it is feminine. An otter, dòbhran on the other hand is masculine. I’m curious about how these grammatical genders were decided; in french it is the reverse – un écureuil une loutre .
The extra blip is one of the local grey squirrels, I can’t do plurals in Gaelic without looking them up ( I did have to check the spelling for écureuil).
More gloomy news although the islands seem to have control of the outbreaks there, and although the number of positive tests is over 2k the positivity rate has fallen below 8%.
And if it is a hazel tree these catkins are masculine, the female ones don’t look like catkins at all, I’ve just looked it up in the Woodland Trust app.