The Changing Seasons

That we have skeins of geese passing through is a sure sign of the changing seasons. In summer we hardly see one; starting in autumn their numbers rise to a crescendo by mid winter, before falling back with the coming of spring.

The geese are evidently taking their time in their migration, for the skein you see here is travelling north, not, therefore, as part of a migration but in a daily movement between fields where they are feeding, and their overnight roosts. They'll probably move on, in the right direction, as soon as they have refuelled.

Here is another sign of oncoming autumn, rowan branches crowded with berries, a sign too that the coming winter season may be a hard one. Perhaps we should expect a hard winter, after last year's relatively mild one and the peculiarities of this damp, cool, grey summer. Another is seen in the hazel trees where....

....there are masses of cob nuts, perhaps, to my unscientific eyes, twice as many as this time last year.

Then there is the wider heather family. The brightly coloured bell heather is already dying, its flowers brittle brown against the pale lilac of the more recently flowering ling, while the cross-leaved heath, at bottom right in this picture, was first to flower but is still in sturdy bloom.
 

We still have a few butterflies in the garden - red admirals, peacocks, tortoiseshells, a painted lady - sad, small numbers which come out to play only when the sun warms them for a few minutes. 

Far hardier are the speckled woods in Speckled Wood which are on the wing - just - even when the early-morning atmosphere is still miserably damp.

We've been quite worried about Robbut who has been AWOL for a few days, we thought because the neighbouring cat with the wild cat markings had been in the garden; and last night, thinking that Robbut was away, we even allowed a couple of dogs in - but this morning he was back, and very much at home.

Robbut

Our rabbit, which is now regularly to be seen in and around the garden, has a name. It took us some time to decide on one as we wanted something that reflected his mischievous character - for example, he is now....

....regularly stealing the birds' grain.

Mrs MW came up with the name Robbut, taken from.... 

....a book she was given way back in 1952. It was a present from her mother Bea, given her while the family was on a caravanning holiday in either South Wales or Cornwall.

It's the story of a rabbit which isn't satisfied with the way things are but which discovers that, very often, what you have is far better than any of the alternatives.

Coastguard

Before eight this morning we became aware of a helicopter out over the firth which, when it came a little closer, turned out to be....

....one of HM Coastguard's machines, evidently tracking back and forth in search of something or, more likely, someone. It was later joined....

....by the Invergordon lifeboat.

I spent thirteen years of my life in Kilchoan as a volunteer coastguard, an occasional job which saw many tragedies - as I fear is unfolding in the Moray Firth today - but also much enjoyment and, on good days, satisfaction.

It was good to be part of a team which had considerable responsibility, covering, as it did, a large and very remote area. More, it was one of the few cliff rescue teams on the west coast which meant that it could be called upon to use its skills in areas outside West Ardnamurchan. We trained hard, we responded to calls at any time of day and night, we spent many hours in what was often fairy hopeless searches. Because I had time on my hands after the sale of the shop I genjoyed checking all the equipment every month, which....

....included taking the vehicle for a run if it hadn't been used in some time.

When I left the service I was treated to a 'jolly' in one of the Coastguard helicopters, the only time I've been in a helicopter, and a thrilling experience.

Helen Wilson: A Portrait

This picture of my mother Helen arrived unexpectedly the other day by a roundabout route from the estate of my uncle, Sandy Wilson. There is nothing on the back of the photo to indicate where or when it was taken but when I first saw it I guessed that she was in her late teens.

There is the possibility that what is obviously a studio portrait was taken for a reason, and that might have been that, in 1935, she left her family in England to travel to....

....Zanzibar to take up a post in the colonial service there. This picture shows her outside the entrance to the flats where she lived, some time in the late 1930s and....

....this shows her in 1940 when she married my father.

 Looking at the pictures, I think there is a strong chance that someone, perhaps her mother, had the studio portrait taken of her just before she sailed for the romantic island where she was to meet my father. If so, then she would have been twenty-two in the portrait.

It was just as well they had the portrait as the war intervened and she was not to return to the UK until 1946, when she brought me, aged one, 'home' to meet the family.

Garden News

Our days are cool and grey, with a persistent westerly to bring the temperature down and discourage the insects from the abundant flowers in our garden. Of the butterflies, in the occasional patches when the sun's out we're mostly seeing red admirals, peacocks, tortoiseshells and....

....painted ladies, and mostly they're on the buddleia rather than on the verbena, achillea or lavender.

The bees and hover flies prefer the marjoram, which has been in flower for weeks, and the lavender which is doing very well considering it's a Mediterranean plant.

Our rabbit has settled very contentedly into the garden, popping out from his home under the shrubs every time he wants a meal. Fortunately for us, his main diet seems to be the grass, kept neatly trimmed for him by a man with a strimmer, though....

....close observation suggest that buttercup leaves are also on his menu. Pansies aren't, as they've never recovered from his arrival.

We're not seeing any other rabbits in the garden but he's sometimes seen with one of the three wood pigeons which grow fat on the larger seed rejected by the small birds.

On the subject of rabbits, we were pleased, on our rather damp walk this morning, to see, for the first time in some weeks, one of the rabbits in the farmer's field which has large areas of white in their coat. As I've said before, I'm amazed they survive as two red kites have nested in the high pine trees not two hundred metres from where this picture was taken.

Favourite Cars

Of the sixteen cars Mrs MW and I have owned between us over the last sixty years or so we each have a favourite. For Mrs MW it is the big Volvo 240SE estate which we bought when we were first going up from Essex to Scotland on a regular basis, visits which culminated in our making the decision to move to Kilchoan and find a business to run there.

We had bought it when we were looking for a vehicle which would make rather less arduous the long journey between Essex and our regular holiday destination of Ardnamurchan, which took some thirteen hours. We hadn't planned to buy an automatic but we were so impressed with this vehicle that we took the plunge - and have since been amazed that so few cars on British roads are automatics.

Mrs MW liked it because, for all its size and weight, it was such a beautifully safe yet easy car to drive. Further, when we had the shop it was used for shop purposes, so Mrs MW would drive it round the peninsula delivering goods to people who couldn't get in to the shop, and to Inverness and Oban to cash-and-carries.

The car had a huge carrying capacity. For example, we could get two 47kg Calor Gas cylinders in to it as I, as the local Calor dealer, had to deliver Calor all over Western Ardnamurchan.

My favourite car was the Freelander we bought when we sold the shop. It was a diesel automatic and a joy to drive both on Ardnamurchan roads, which were often challenging; off-road when, for example....

,,,,the Coastguard vehicle got stuck; and over long distances such as the trips we made to visit friends and family in England.

We bought the Freelander new and sold it very sadly some years later because it suffered from the Land Rover malaise of rusting, particularly in the salty air of Kilchoan.

Dragonflies and a Painted Lady

I spent some time yesterday at the seep on the track above our house looking for, and then finding, the golden-ringed dragonflies which I had seen there before. Sadly, the dragonflies were not in a mood for a picture or so I came home grumpy with disappointment - only to find....

....an absolutely stunning painted lady in our garden, sharing the buddleias with several other butterflies, including at least four red admirals.

I was back at the seep this morning determined to capture at least one good picture of the dragonflies, to find them in such a co-operative mood that I came away with at least ten pictures worth keeping, though....

....finding them against the background vegetation wasn't easy.

The female golden ringed is supposed to be Britain's largest dragonfly but these particular ones aren't very big, perhaps constrained in their growth by....

....the short, cool summers and long winters.

I sat for half an hour in warm sunshine watching them come and go, and chasing each other all over the place, these frantic flights often ending in vicious, buzzing combat which often resulted in them falling to the ground.