Robbut News

Robbut is still resident in our garden - usually seen cropping the grass along the paths strimmed specially for him though he prefers it if....

....some of the bird grain is available. If it isn't, he indicates his disgust by....

....sitting on the feeder.

He's now familiar enough with us that he'll come within five metres when we're sitting quietly in the garden.

An indication of how 'at home' Robbut feels is this - a neat pile of his droppings which indicate that, like all self-respecting rabbits, he has his own latrine.

Red Deer Stag

Throughout our years of wandering the wilderness of West Ardnamurchan we had many encounters with red deer stags, some of them very close and some un-nerving, for these magnificent animals are both big and very wild.

When we first came to live in Golspie it was still possible to see herds of red deer on the ridge above the track which leads to Loch Lunndhaid, and very occasionally some of these came down onto the track itself, but this area has now been fenced off, the deer culled, and trees planted.

Imagine my surprise, as I walked up the track towards Loch Lunndhaid yesterday evening, when a fully grown red deer stag ran down the road from the right, crossed in front of me, and leaped into the undergrowth to the left.

It all happened so quickly that there was no chance of a photo, but I was left standing, filled with feelings of shock and wonder and, yes, controlled fear, emotions that I haven't felt in a long time - that something so big, so wild and so majestic had been so close.

Much as I would love it to happen, this isn't the sort of event that is likely to repeat itself here in Golspie, though I am quite sure that anyone who wants such a thrill can still find it by wandering the hills of Ardnamurchan.

Swallows and Martins

When I walked up the hill past the upper rabbit field yesterday evening there was just one swallow quartering the ground but this had risen to....

....six when I passed this morning. They seemed to enjoy zooming around the small flock of hoodies but concentrated their feeding efforts on the cows, which were visibly being pestered by insects.

They were feeding but they were also gathering ready for the long journey south. In the absence of the telegraph wires which used to be favoured places most were....

....gathering along the rooftops - this looks like a young swallow - but.in some places there were twenty or more around....

....a gable end which had been used as a nest site by the house martins. But look closely, for there are both swallows and martins in this picture, and I have often wondered whether, when they set off for Africa, the two species travel together.

More Signs of Autumn

On leaving the house for our usual morning walk we noticed immediately that the foliage of the deciduous trees along our road was already showing shades of brown, and that....

....the blackberry bushes underneath them were heavy with fruit. It seems early for these signs of autumn but there is plenty of supporting evidence, with....

....the St John's wort along the edges of the forest paths also in fruit and showing some glorious leaf colours and....

....rather more fungi than we've seen in many weeks. I always hesitate to identify fungi but, while this may be a bonnet....

....this may be a scrambled egg slime mould.

Never mind. At least these early signs of autumn are an excuse to enjoy a winter drink, real Bovril made from real beef served in my Bovril-only mug which celebrates that iconic geological feature of Lochaber, the parallel roads of Glen Roy.

The Expert

When I was a secondary schoolmaster I always considered myself a generalist rather than a subject 'expert', so I was particularly useful to the unfortunate colleague who had to construct the annual school timetable, when he/she found they needed someone to teach a class of, say, history, but didn't have a history specialist to take it. So, over my thirty years in the profession, I took classes of geography, geology, history, English, religious education, personal and social education, information technology, French, maths, general science, and, just the once, thank goodness, girls' netball. Of these I was qualified in only one: geology.

I enjoyed learning in new subject areas, and felt that it was not altogether a bad thing that I approached a subject from the same ignorant view as most of my pupils.

Despite this, I have always had a niggling desire to have been THE world expert on something. I might have become just that when, on leaving university in 1967, I was offered an MSc, the area of research being the Namurian goniatites of the Derbyshire/Staffordshire Peak District, goniatites being a slightly obscure, ancient and long-extinct relative of the ammonites.

Had I been able to take history at university - I wasn't, because I didn't even have an 'O'-level in the subject - my research would have been into the development and spread of the lateen sail, seen here on an ngalawa off the Tanzanian coast. I suppose the reason for this interest lay in the fact that I had seen lateen sails through my early life in Tanganyika and Kenya, and because....

....a lateen sail, seen here on an Omani dhow, has always seemed to me to be exceptionally beautiful.

I would also have loved to have been an expert on the semi-precious gemstone tourmaline. Its elongate, elegant natural crystals are so much more special than most other semi-precious stones because they come in such a variety of colours: colourless or in umpteen shades of pink, red, blue, green, yellow and black. My favourite variety is indicolite, which runs through rich blues and greens. More, and very unusually, the colour of tourmaline crystals can vary both along the length of the crystal and in zones from a central axis.

I suppose that, if I had organised myself for my retirement, I could have become the world expert on something but I allowed that opportunity to slip by. In any case, by the time I had spent years becoming that expert it would probably have been too late - I would have been forgetting all the precious facts so fast I would soon have ceased to be the world expert.

Photos of goniatite and tourmalines courtesy Wikipedia.

Peace

I like this spot. It's the small quarry where the seep of water appears and runs into the ditch along the side of the forest track, a place where, as I did this morning, I can sit on one of the boulders and watch the lone golden-ringed dragonfly patrol up and down, up and down, presumably defending what is, in his world, his territory.

It's a peaceful spot. Occasionally a dog-walker passes; occasionally the dragonfly lands and then takes off just as my camera focuses on him; occasionally a bird sings. But today all that peace was disturbed by what sounded like a large and very angry hornet...

....buzzing above the tops of the pine trees where the kites and buzzards usually wheel and call.

It took a minute or two to find the cause of this interruption to the peace of my world: a drone, the sort of thing one associates with Ukraine, I would guess following and checking the power lines that cut through the Bheinn Bhraggie forestry.

So I sat and listened to the drone, until the RAF woke up over at Lossiemouth, so the dron'se whine vied with the roar of fighter jets preparing for war. But the dragonfly continued his patrolling and, after a bit, a willow warbler started to call, not the wonderful cascade of falling notes of his spring song but a slightly mournful single note, cheep-cheep-cheep, as if all this noise and disturbance was too much for him and it was thime to turn south, south to Africa.

A Hot Day

We have no less than nine buddleia of various sorts growing in the garden, planted specifically for the insects and, particularly, the butterflies - so it was very gratifying yesterday to see the sun out almost all day, light winds, and a temperature which soared to 24C, with the result that the butterflies came out in force. On one buddleia shrub alone I counter nine peacocks and three red admirals.

So we had plenty of butterflies but the number of species was limited to just four - one of the whites, the red admirals, the peacocks, and a couple of tortoiseshells.

We also have about ten verbena bonariensis in flower, some over 6' tall, two lavenders in exuberant flower, and....

....three clumps of michaelmas daisies just coming into full bloom, all these along with many other flowering plants, yet the number of insects they have managed to attract is worryingly small - a few bees, hardly any hover flies, no wasps....

I talk to people on my walks in the forestry and many have also noticed that the insects are really suffering, whether from the grey summer or for other reasons. So, while it's very disappointing that all the flowers we have grown for the insects are not being fully appreciated, my main feeling is of worry. Why?