Whatever the Weather

Despite the miserable weather - a gusting northwesterly is bringing in heavy showers which include some of sleet - it was business as usual for us this morning, with Mrs MW heading in to the Golspie metropolis for some shopping and the day's newspaper, while I walked up into the woods below Bheinn Bhraggie, which was fine except that....

....there was precious little to be seen, witness the only fungus I found (above). The small birds were almost silent as the heavy showers came through, and the only larger birds in the air were the geese, on their daily commute to find some food, several crows mostly in small, noisy family groups, and one red kite.

Where my route came out of the forestry into the open I was able to snatch this picture of a rainbow, its pot of gold being under an electricity pylon, which seems appropriate as that is where the money is today.

Seconds later, the next heavy shower came bustling through on a cold wind, leaving me to find a clean cloth to dry the camera lens.

We have a 'rule': every day, whatever the weather, unless conditions are too risky, we get out for a walk. The essentials, of course, are our wet-weather gear, which works in almost all conditions. When we arrived home today, both of us were dry under our outer layer.

The Drone

This morning, just before breakfast, we watched skein after skein of geese tracking northwards towards their daytime feeding grounds, calling as they passed. Then, this afternoon, as the light began to fade around 4pm, we watched the same skeins making their way back to their overnight roosts to the south of us - except that, as we watched this display of birds who have, just about, managed to co-exist with us humans....

....this came between us, a drone which buzzed back-and-forth above the village for several minutes, its infernal noise cutting across the calls of the geese.

I stood in the garden and watched as it tracked to and fro above me - and it infuriated me, the idea that someone, somewhere was watching me as I pottered around about my business. Perhaps they had good reason to be doing this, but they hadn't asked me if I minded.

I desperately wanted a ground-to-air anti-drone missile which could knock it out of the sky and restore some of the quiet and privacy of my back garden.

Or, perhaps, someone who could train the geese to neutralise it.

The Return of Robbut?

After a run of cold, grey, almost windless days, this morning looked promising and we soon had bright sunshine....

....probing into the shadowy undergrowth along the far sides of the fields where we used to see the rabbits and where we haven't seen a rabbit since the end of September, no more than we'e seen rabbits on the lawns at night at the front of our houses.

However, to our considerable surprise, as we were about to go out for our morning exercise we spotted....

....a rabbit on our back 'lawn', busy digging it up to get at the roots of the grass or, perhaps, the daisies and clovers and other plants that make it a truly wild lawn.

In all honesty, we don't now whether this is or is not Robbut, though it's about the size Robbut would have been had he survived whatever it is that's almost destroyed our local rabbit population.
 
We sat in the sitting room, which overlooks our back garden, watching 'Robbut' until he hopped away to take refuge under the ramp that leads down to the garden.

Yellow's The Colour....

To me, yellow's one of the main colours of spring, of daffodils and primroses and dandelions, while at this stage of the year, if there are flowers still in bloom, they tend to be in blues and purples. That said, it's surprising how many of the current wildflowers are yellow. like this St John's wart - though this is an invasive species rather than wild. It's mainly autumn flowering, as is....

....this. There's plenty of it along the verges of the more open forest tracks. My computer wants to identify it as flatweed, Mrs MW suggests it's coltsfoot, and I'm sitting on an uncomfortable fence. Whatever it is, it's a welcome splash of colour in a landscape which is increasingly grey.

If we're very much looking at the last of 2026's blooms, there is one shrub which rebels. I would guess that about 5% of the local gorse is coming in to flower, and will continue to flower right the way through the winter - so I'll be trying to photograph it in the snow.

I have no idea why so much of the gorse is now winter-flowering. By November, there are precious few insects on the wing, with the daytime temperatures around 8C and the overnight thermometer at 3C, so there will be even fewer as the days get progressively shorter, colder and darker.

However, it's good to think that we'll have one bright colour cheering up our winter hills.

A Cold Place

With winter heaving into view I'm reminded that I have only once been to a really cold place, and that was to Lapland in 2010, in January, where we stayed for a week. The weather was still and clear and, as you would expect of somewhere inside the Arctic Circle, cold, very cold - picture shows the house we stayed in which was, mercifully, wonderfully warm.

While we were there we did all the things that tourists are expected to do in such a place - ride in sleighs pulled by reindeer and eat reindeer meat, trek using snowshoes, and view the northern lights - they were conspicuously absent - but the best was ice fishing. This consisted of using an augur to drill a hole in the metre thick ice covering a small river, and then attracting the fish - Arctic char - with an artificial lure. As each fish was pulled out of the hole there was a sharp crackle, the sound of the poor beast being instantly frozen in a temperature of -34C.

We enjoyed the holiday immensely, particularly for the people we were with and for the stunning scenery, visible only in the short daylight hours, but I would never go back, for I found the cold crippling and the price of a dram to combat its effects depressing. 

However, I'm so glad we did the trip, for the experience and to appreciate the stubborn way humanity manages to adapt to almost impossible environment.

Lost!

It was only momentary, and it hit me as I was working my way down off this hill through a rough area of overgrown gorse and bracken, but the feeling, so vividly remembered, was one I had hoped I would never have again - that I was lost.

Thankfully, it didn't last long as I soon felt I knew where I was and that I had not, after all, left the path that would take me down to the forestry track.

The one time I was well and truly lost was while on a game-fishing trip to the south of Jamaica, a trip which my two companions, Richard and Horace, had done often enough before; and we were lost because of an error of judgement by Richard, the owner of the boat.  The story is told in an earlier blog post - here - but what I recall most out of that incident is the sense of empty, utter despair I felt.

We were fortunate, very fortunate indeed, that we managed to find our way back and we certainly didn't do any fishing that day, but it didn't put me off going out with Richard and Horace again. What I did learn was that, if I ever again had that horrible feeling that I might be lost, the best thing to do immediately would be to sit down and think - because once one has identified where the mistake was made, one has a chance of remedying it.

Surely the Last....?

I keep coming across plants and other wildlife which I think should long ago have disappeared into their winter quarters, like this lone devil's-bit scabious which was still flowering in the protected glen of a small burn running down off Bheinn Bhraggie; and if it was well past its time so was....

....this foxglove which was in solitary flower beside the fence of the farmer's sheep field. And if this was surprising so was....

....this frog which crossed the track close in front of me, presumably determined to reach the place where it was planning to over-winter.

However, the biggest surprise, after all the speculation as to whether the last butterfly of the year would be a red admiral or a painted lady, was finding.....

....this tortoiseshell. basking in the sunshine on the shutter of our drying room.

So the prize for the last butterfly on the wing at the end of summer 2026 goes to a tortoiseshell.