A Fork in the Road

After a much more cheerful day yesterday, with the sun out and a count, at one point, of no less than six butterflies in the garden, including this painted lady....

....today turned miserable, so I took a brisk walk in drizzly rain up to this fork in the road. I like this spot. Things happen here - like, three weeks ago, a red deer stag ran across the track close in front of me.

Today, the excitement was on a slightly lower scale - in fact, on a very small scale, because it was generated by this little bird. It's a chiffchaff which, to me, shouldn't be here. I've always thought of it. as migratory bird, one of the first warblers to arrive in spring, but this one is either rather late in departing or it's planning to spend the winter here.

A few minutes' research showed that chiffchaffs do overwinter just to the south of here, so perhaps it will stay with us - which in some ways would be rather good, in others less so as I won't have the pleasure of listening out for it in spring.

The song of the chiffchaff was laid across an almost constant calling of skeins of pink-footed geese, about a hundred geese altogether, which kept circling above the fields this side of the golf course, and....

....the very insistent chatter of this robin, reminding us that this fork in the road is HIS for the winter.

Autumn - Maybe

The astronomical equinox happened in the early hours of this morning so we're now officially in to autumn, but the fact is that, here on the ground, the temperatures over the last few days have sometimes suggested it's more like we've passed from autumn into winter. In addition, many of the summer flowers have gone, and even those that are still in bloom, like the bell heather, are showing their age; and there are no new wildflower species appearing to get excited about.

However, despite the fact that winter is my least favourite season, there are things to look forward to, like....

....the sun rising further and further south along the horizon, so we can climb out of bed in the morning and look out on a glorious skyscape of colours. 

Then there are some birds which spend their summer either in some distant destination or lost to sight in the pine forests - like the coal tits, which have begun to reappear only in the last few days.

The fungi are also something to look forward to, even if their appearances are mainly made in the early part of winter. Some of them are shooting up in almost indecent haste: three days ago these were still underground.

Sadly, the fungus' display has been marred this year by the slugs and snails, which get onto the caps almost before they have a chance to open.

The signs from the berry trees are that it's going to be a hard winter. I don't think that, since being in Golspie, we've seen the rowans branches so loaded - and I thought they were heavy last year.

A hard winter? I think I can do without that!

Confrontation

I recognise the grating sounds of anger of an annoyed robin but yesterday, as I was trying to relax in the back garden during a few moments' sunshine between the showers, I heard robin anger of unprecedented fury - to the extent that I took this photo of the source, what I thought was a lone robin but which turned our to be....

....the noisy robin apparently confronting a silent robin.

Was the one that was silent a female, and the noisy one an amorous male? This seemed unlikely at this time of year. Or was it....

....a very dominant male trying to frighten away a possible territorial rival? If this was the case, the rival seemed quite prepared to hold his ground in silent belligerence.

I didn't see the final outcome because I was distracted by....

....what I thought might be the last butterfly of the year, a red admiral.

A Damp Day

To make a change from yesterday's gusting winds today dawned still, and very wet, with large puddles along the tracks and....

....spiders webs picked out by raindrops. I walked up the hill to the point where I could see....

....Silver Rock clothed in mist.

It was always my intention to climb this hill for it must have a fine view all around but particularly across Loch Fleet - but I never got round to it and now it's probably beyond me.

At least the weather suited some, for there was a good selection of....

....fungi to be admired, including these two puffballs and....

....this tiny gill eking an existence out of a pile of chipped pinewood.

After yesterday's thrashing of leaves and branches the hills seemed very quiet, the dominant sound the calls....

....of hundreds of pink-footed geese trying to find a field where they would be left in peace to feed on the barley grains left by the harvester.

A Torrent of Wind

The garden has been blasted all day by a southwesterly which has gusted up towards force 6, and the morning started cold, the thermometer just reading 12C when we first went out but struggling up to 15C as the morning wore on. However, despite these adverse conditions, the insects....

....have been out in force in our back garden, wasps, hover flies and several species of....

....small bees, all managing precarious landings on plants they were waving around madly in the wind. There was almost a sense of desperation, as if they knew that summer is moving over indecently quickly to give way to autumn.

To my considerable surprise, two butterflies were out in this chaos, a very smart red admiral which, surprisingly, chose to feed on verbena plants which, on the end of six-foot stems, were describing wild arcs in the wind, while....

....the peacock wisely chose the michaelmas daisies, which were much more stable.

There's no sign of change in the weather tomorrow except that the wind is shifting into the northwest and increasing in speed, gusts up to gale force being forecast for lunchtime tomorrow.

Latest Robbut News

I'm sorry to tell it, but the latest news of our resident rabbit, Robbut, is not good. The last definite sighting of him was on 3rd September when he was in one of his usual places cropping the succulent grass. A few minutes later....

....and to our considerable consternation, we noticed a second rabbit near him - seen in this picture half-hidden on the right.

I'm sure readers will understand our concern at seeing Robbut with another rabbit, as two-plus-two in the rabbit world has a nasty habit of making ten. And while we love our resident rabbit dearly, we're not sure we want our carefully-tended garden to be turned into a rabbit warren,

That said, events moved on fast for we had a fleeting view of the second rabbit - seen in this picture - before the two of them took fright and disappeared into the pond area.

We were hoping for further sightings in the subsequent days but these did not occur, probably because one of our daughters came to stay for a week and she never goes anywhere without her two precious dogs, one of which is the lurcher featured in a recent post, here. At this point the rabbits, very wisely, disappeared, since when we've not seen any sign of rabbit activity in our garden, We keep hoping Robbut will return, though we're not sure we're that keen on him bringing a lady friend with him.

A Roadside Camp

This is a picture of a typical roadside camp during the weeks Michael Atkinson and I spent hitch-hiking in North Africa in 1964. Michael is to the left, still rolled up in his sleeping bag asleep even though the sun has been up for some time and the air is hot. My belongings are on the right, 'airing'. To the right of them the bank slopes up to a road very like any long, straight road in France with trees lining it, but this isn't France, it's Algeria, recently independent from France after a truly horrid war.

At this stage of the outward journey we were still trying to get back to Southern Rhodesia but, instead of crossing the Sahara as we had originally planned, we were heading for Egypt in the hope of going up the Nile.

Looking back, the whole journey was a terrible risk but we seemed, in those far-off days, to be capable of carrying on whatever the journey threw at us. In a few minutes Michael will wake and we'll make breakfast out of whatever we happen to have in our rucksacks. Then we'll pack them, walk up to the road, and hang out a thumb - and we never knew who would draw up and offer us a lift. It was part of the excitement of the day.