Birds on a Sunny Morning

We woke to another glorious morning with the promise of sunshine, warmer temperatures and light winds, a day which the small birds....

....would be determined to exploit. Setting off from the house I saw all the usual birds drawn in by the promise of a free breakfast - siskin, goldfinch, chaffinch, dunnock, blackbird and robin, blue, coal, great and, to my joy....

....the first long-tailed tits in ages. Sadly I only saw three when I would have hoped to see them going round in the usual flocks of eight or so.

I followed one of my favourite walks through an area of pine plantation burned by the fire of ten years ago where wrens, song thrushes and chiff-chaffs were singing, along with this small bird which I have difficulty in identifying.

The track I followed was the forestry version of a cul-de-sac, but it ends with this view across Loch Fleet towards the highlands beyond Bonar Bridge, still blanketed with snow.

To make my day, on the way back the verges had warmed enough to draw out....

....two peacock butterflies, the first butterflies we've seen since March 20th.

Littleferry - Again!

Given the chance, and some fine weather, we'll drive the ten minutes to Littleferry to walk along its beach, particularly when, on a day like today, there's a spring tide with the sea low and miles and miles of sandy beach exposed - and absolutely no-one to share it with except for....

....a couple of oystercatchers.

We do appreciate our good fortune. I can't believe that there are many other beaches in Britain of the size of the one at Littleferry which are as deserted on a fine Monday Bank Holiday.

Another reason for going to Littleferry is that we are hearing that the first ospreys are back from their winter quarters in western Africa. There are supposed to be no less than four active nests around Loch Fleet - and we will, in the next few days, return to Littleferry to check the one which we watch each year - but there was no sign of any ospreys yet.

Instead, we spent a few minutes watching the pink-footed geese which seemed to be in a state of considerable confusion as to which way they were supposed to be flying. At the time this picture was taken they were heading very determinedly south.

April Snow

Snow fell through much of last night, at times quite heavily, blown by a vicious north wind, but by morning much of it had melted, particularly where a warm sun had reached it.

We walked this morning without having to resort to our heavier boots or to cleats though we did keep to the paths in the lower forestry as it was fairly obvious that....

....snow had accumulated to a greater depth on the tops of the hills.

As the day progresses snow continues to fall and the thermometer stays stubbornly at 5C.

This is not the sort of weather the birds, like this coal tit, want when they are meant to be busy establishing territories, pairing up, and building their nests.

Yellow's the Colour

Spring is desperately slow in arriving. Last night we had snow, and then a frost, so little wonder that, while the small birds continue to struggle manfully with the conditions, the wildflowers are refusing to appear. So far, all the wildflowers have been yellow. The list is short: gorse, which has been flowering on and off all winter, a few lesser celandines, and....

....this, the first dandelion of the year, its relatively early appearance due, perhaps, to a south-facing aspect and its location in the protection of a ditch.

To add to their trials, the wildflowers are now threatened by Storm Dave, due to arrive overnight but forecast to hit the west coast much harder than us. If we don't have Dave's gales and rain, instead we are forecast to have a cold easterly with more wintery showers, though I suspect we might have rather stronger winds than forecast as....

....this ship, the Madeira-flagged Aramis, has anchored in shelter on the far side of the firth. She's on passage to Wick carrying what look like the blades of wind turbines.

The 'Durban Castle'

My father's contract with his employer, the African Mercantile, included 'home leave' every three years, and this was due towards the end of 1952. My parents felt that it would be good for my brother and I to experience an English winter, but to keep that 'experience' fairly short they decided to travel from Mombasa to the UK 'the long way' - that is, from Mombasa southwards calling at Dar-es-Salaam, Beira, Durban, East London, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, St Helena, Ascension and the Canary Islands - which took six weeks rather than the four weeks via the Suez Canal.

I have some vivid memories of that journey. We travelled first class so the food and accommodation were good, and we enjoyed important events like ice cream served on deck at eleven every morning with, occasionally, second helpings. I remember the magnificently decorated rickshaws in Durban pulled by Zulus in feathered finery, and the huge shark which swam beside the ship in one of the east coast ports. I recall catching a small black fish off the stern of the ship, this achieved by lowering a tin on a long piece of string - though I can't recall what I provided in the way of bait, nor how I obtained the tin and the string. I remember going ashore at Gran Canaria and being captivated by the brilliant yellow canaries for sale in cages. I desperately wanted one but my parents vetoed the idea.

As we approached the Bay of Biscay, the ice cream was replaced with bovril. The weather deteriorated, we had to wear thicker clothing, though however thick it was it didn't seem to keep me warm. And when we docked at Southampton I remember being amazed to see white men doing labouring jobs like mending the roads.

It wasn't a good leave. My father was ill with suspected TB, so we had to spend an extra two months in a bitterly cold winter. Fortunately, we had a pleasant flat overlooking the Thames: I recall having to cross Putney Bridge to reach the small private school we attended.

While there, my parents made the decision that, as soon as I was nine, I would go to school in England. They visited their chosen school, Glengorse, but I don't remember being either invited or consulted. When we set off to fly back to Mombasa - which took three days as the 'plane could only fly in daylight - I hoped never to see England again.

Corrugations

This section of estate track near our house is displaying a phenomenon with which drivers in countries where dirt roads are common are only too familiar. Corrugations are like ripples in sand, usually with a wavelength of about a metre and an amplitude of 25-50mm, which develop across the road. They're formed by the passage of vehicles along a road which has an unconsolidated sandy or gravelly surface, the corrugations being formed when the wheels start to bounce along the road.

Travelling along such roads is both uncomfortable and jarringly painful, particularly as corrugations can continue for many miles. That they have formed on this estate track is a bit of a mystery - it's the first time I've seen corrugations outside Africa. The juddering has other, sometimes dangerous effects. For example, phillips screws have a habit of falling out.

We found that it was agony to travel along such roads slowly, and that the best approach was to drive as fast as possible so the car planed across the corrugated surface. When the car did this, it lacked traction, which meant that, in inexperienced hands, there was an increased chance of an accident. 

Corrugations were just one of the many trials of travelling on African roads. In the wet season these surfaces were sometimes covered with a slick of mud, which meant the surface behaved rather like the black ice of UK roads. Add to these problems the hazards of clouds of dust in the dry season, the way loose sand also acted like black ice, and deep, glutinous mud in the wet, into which cars sank axle-deep. Little wonder that African roads exacted a high price in human lives.

Despite the Weather....

Despite the recent appalling weather the small birds have been doing their best to carry on as if spring really was almost here - so we're seeing the males in their mating finery and....

....even some of the birds, like this greenfinch, which we've not seen in the garden for some time, now coming in to fill themselves with good things so they can excel at the mating game.

Sadly, some of them are getting a little too excited. This female chaffinch was evidently being chased by an over-amorous....

....male so, in their excitement, the two of them ended up crashing in to the glass sheets of our balcony's balustrade - with terminal results for the female and, probably, a severe headache for the male.

Down at ground level spring is being measured by the flowering of some 'old favourite' plants, like this lesser celandine and, in the Council meadow that runs along the A9....

....by the very first cowslip of the season.