It's Snowdrop Time!

Around this time in March last year I remarked on the magnificence of the snowdrop displays in the woodlands to the northeast of Dunrobin Castle and I have to make the same comment after our walk today. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised and this is simply 'normal' for this area.

In some ways it's a bit disappointing that the flower that seems most emblematic of the earliest signs of a British spring should be a foreigner, an immigrant, something that was brought in from a wide area of Spain, France and the Low Countries where the species Galanthus nivalis is native.

It's one of twenty natural species of Galanthus, the others being mainly found around the Black and Aegean Seas and east to the Caspian - see Wikipedia map here.

Snowdrops are lovely because they come in such numbers that they carpet the floors of our woodlands - which rather neglects the point that each and every one of them is remarkably pretty - one just has to get down on one's hands and knees and look up at them - which may attract some strange looks.

The Cricket Match

This is a picture of me dressed for a game of cricket in borrowed kit, which is why the pads are several sizes too big. I'm in the front garden of the last house we occupied in Mombasa, so this was probably the summer holiday of 1959. The game was a one-off, a group of local schoolboys versus a Sports Club XI, and I recall my father being very keen that I should take part.

A couple of days ago I wrote about my father's cricketing prowess. By comparison, I was pretty useless at the game, hating batting and only enjoying the wicket-keeping, which I how I managed to get in to my prep school's first eleven. Unfortunately, the schoolboy side already had a good wicket-keeper, so I was sent off to field at a distant point on the boundary where I could safely do little damage, and batted last in the order. I scored a duck.

It must have been very galling for my father that, both his children having been boys - he always wanted a daughter - neither my brother nor I were much good at cricket. To watch his eldest son make an idiot of himself on the Sports Club playing field in front of an assembled crowd must have been painful for him.

Sunshine at Littleferry

A night of snow showers and clear intervals which left slicks of ice on the roads gave way to a cloudless morning which we enjoyed on the beach at Littleferry meeting only one other couple and their small dog. We saw few shore birds, just gulls, a dozen cormorants, some oystercatchers, and three redshanks, until we reached....

....the mouth of Loch Fleet where, although there was a similar paucity of wildlife, at least it had more variety, with a few eider and what might have been a common scoter to add to the mix. 

The mudflats of the inner basin of Loch Fleet were as deserted save for a single shelduck, a few widgeon, the usual gulls and crows, and some oystercatchers. We're becoming used to these deserted landscapes though we cannot work out why these rich feeding grounds aren't crowded with birds.

It is a very quiet time of year, as if everything is waiting breathlessly for the temperatures to rise. Even the fungi are dormant: this yellow brain fungus, growing as usual on a dead gorse branch, was the only one we found.

The Eyes of a Killer

The sparrowhawk is patrolling through our garden fairly frequently these days. We know this because we've seen him and also because of the behaviour of the small birds, some of which hardly dare to leave the relative safety of a bush for a few moments at the feeders.

The ones which seem most frightened are the sparrows, chaffinches and green finches. The larger birds, such as the blackbirds, seem less worried, as - surprisingly - are some of the very small birds such as the blue and coal tits. I would love to know why because this hawk will happily take birds up to the size of a pigeon - I have seen one murdering a collared dove - and down as small as the tiniest tit.

It's a beautiful bird, but one has only to look at its eyes to be reminded that it is a finely honed killing machine.

My Father, the Sportsman

My father was a very keen sportsman, his particular interest being soccer. In the 'Life' she wrote of him, my mother told how, when he went to Leyton County High School, he was "devoted to football and was good enough to be put into the first eleven on his arrival at the school. He was very proud of this and wore the cap of the First Eleven straight away."

This picture shows him with a team called Harrington United Football Club, a club which today, according to the internet. only exists in the town of Harrington in Australia. The only connection I can see to the club is that, in another picture, of the choir in which he sang at his local church, the choir master is a Mr Harrington. I wonder if he organised the club.  My father is second from left in the top row.

The Harrington United picture must have been taken just before he left for Port Sudan where I would be surprised if there had been a team, but he was playing again in 1930 when he worked in Beira - again, he's second from left, top row, and he continued to play....

....after he moved to Zanzibar: I just love this picture of him!

I don't remember seeing him play football - but the time I was born he was 43, so he had probably hung up his boots by then - but he was also a keen cricketer. Again, I don't remember seeing him play but I have vivid memories of him umpiring at the Sports Club in Mombasa, standing behind the stumps in a white coat with the bowler's white sunhat perched on his head.

He followed football on the television when he retired to England but hated the way the game became increasingly commercialised. I accompanied him to some matches - I remember going to watch Fulham at Craven Cottage - but his main interest steadily moved to cricket. While he lived in Hastings he followed Kent, and my mother and he went with their great friends, Bill and Margaret Solly, to watch Kent at beautiful grounds like the one at Canterbury.

When he came to live in Maldon, back in the county of Essex where he was born, he returned to watching Essex, and the last game we went to together was at Chelmsford, where Essex was playing the visiting Australian test team. I remember it as a very happy day.

Beach Creeper

This post was precipitated by the success of my researches to find the name of the big red bean which we used to find washed up along the tide line of East Africa's beaches: I'd collected many in my time without knowing what it was called - see earlier post here.

Another, similar mystery was the name of the creeper which is common along the back of the same beaches, just above the high-tide mark. Again, a few minutes' research on the internet found the answer: it's goat's foot creeper, Ipomoea pes-caprae, one of the morning glory family with dark pink flowers, which is found along the margins of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Named 'goat's foot' for the shape of its lobed, leathery leaves, it is incredibly hardy, being able to grow on dunes and in salty, sandy soils by putting down roots to a metre depth. It spreads by sending out runners just under the surface and by producing a fruiting capsule which floats - hence, like the red bean, its wide distribution.

I find a strange satisfaction in clearing up a little mystery like this, one which has been with me for decades.

Small Bird News

It's difficult to count robins as they all look the same but we think we have three which inhabit our garden and, judging by the way they chase each other around, or don't, there are two males and one female.

They're feisty little birds, quite willing to take on other species, and our ones are also....

....intelligent enough to learn to adapt as I challenge the birds with new types of feeder. There was a time when the robins couldn't cling on to ones like this.

The blue tits, of course, have no such difficulties, and quickly work out how to exploit new feeders. This is one of the latest inventions, made out of a vitamin pill container and designed to be exclusive to the tit family while keeping the sunflower seeds dry.

The blue tits are still the most common bird in the garden, a statement which I never believed I would write. We counted thirteen at one time one lunchtime a few days ago. The usual contender for this accolade is, of course, the house sparrow but we now see dismally very few of them.

As with the robins, there are plenty of blackbirds chasing each other around at the moment and, like the robins, it's difficult to tell them apart but we estimate we have at least two pairs visiting us.

The males are in their mating gear but the females' drab appearance isn't quite what it looks. Have a close look at this lady: brown she may be but she's very pretty.

Happily, at least one pair of greenfinches are back at the feeders, aggressive as ever.

Here's the female and....

....this is the male. Both of them love peanuts.

On the larger size, we've been watching a pair of buzzards wheeling and calling above Dunrobin Woods, so they've started their mating cycle. We also have a 90% certain identification of our first golden eagle since being on this side of Scotland, which caused consternation amongst the gulls feeding on the adjacent playing field as it flew over the house. Sadly it passed over so quickly I didn't have time to reach the camera.

To the Beach!

My mother loved swimming, as did Richard and I, so we jumped at any opportunity to go to a good beach - and Mombasa's beaches were superb. However, when we lived on Mombasa island we had a problem: my mother didn't drive and the best beaches were some distance out of Mombasa, leaving us with a choice between the two places we could reach by bicycle.

One was the so-called Chini pool, which was below the Mombasa Club overlooking the Old Town anchorage. It was okay but, as can be seen from this picture, we loved doing things like snorkelling which wasn't much good in a pool.

The other was the Swimming Club which we could reach by cycling down to the Old Port and hiring a couple of  men in a rowing boat to take us across to it. While the Old Port was always interesting as, in those days, dozens of dhows of all shapes and sizes came in to it, the crossing to the Club could be a bit scary if a strong wind was blowing.

That she didn't drive was because my father's cars were all company cars - he's seen here with 'our' Morris Oxford, KAA 694 - and she wasn't allowed to drive them. She had a licence, obtained when she was working in Zanzibar, and owned at least two cars while there for....

....in her 'Life' she wrote, "I had changed my good little Morris purchased from Ian Rutter for a larger Morris 10 which gave infinite trouble as on any long drive it heated up and would stop until it cooled down."

The picture above may be of her, right, with one of them.

Towards the end of our time in Mombasa the problem was at least partly solved by my father's promotion to general manager of the African Mercantile which brought with it an important bonus, a chauffeur called Gabriel. By that time my father had a Rover 90 - seen here - which was a very smart car but had the same problem as most cars in those days - it was black so absorbed heat. If Gabriel and the car were available, we could then be driven out to a really good beach in (rather warm) style.

Dismal Weather

This is the sort of weather we're enduring at the moment, slushy snow and icy rain with temperatures hovering around zero giving a damp chill to the air, made worse when the wind decides to get up. The lack of sunshine is the most depressing part of it, and compensating for it with daily doses of vitamin D isn't quite the same, but we count ourselves lucky when we read about the weather that others in the UK are enduring at the moment.

The sleety slush tumbling out of a grey sky doesn't prevent us taking our daily walk, today's being up into the forestry below Beinn Bhraggie, mainly following mountain bike trails. There was more long-settled snow and some patches of quite slippery ice but the main thing I miss on such walks is....

....some excitement. The views are all closed down by the murk so we walk anxiously scanning the surroundings for something new growing, such as the recent snowdrops, or for a bird or a deer or.... well, just about anything that's new or a bit different.

The lack of bird life is evident in the woods. There's one point on today's walk which almost always has some goldcrests twittering in the dark Scots pines but this particular spot seems silent now. The only remarkable thing we found was....

....what might be a slime mould, several growing on a fallen Scots pine. It may be Reticularia lycoperdon, commonly known as the false puffball as it opens to reveal the same brown spores as the true puffballs.

The last days of a long winter are always the worst but we may have a lot more to come. March, given the chance, can be pretty miserable but at least by then the daylight hours have drawn out.

A Herd of Elephants

The same person who brought in the African dream beans on Tuesday also brought in this herd of elephants, the largest of which is about 3" high. As with the beans, they brought memories flooding back as my mother had an elephant just like them which was also carved from what is probably ebony with ivory tusks and toenails.

It's difficult to tell from the ears whether they came from East Africa or the Far East but their heads seem to have twin domes which suggest they are Asian while the fact that most have tusks suggest they are African. Since my mother lived in both East Africa and Burma in her time, hers could have come from either.

These donations are very welcome in the shop as they're the sort of thing that sells well but, at the same time, they are very sad as the person who once treasured them, as I treasure so much of this sort of bric-a-brac for their associated memories, has probably no further need of them; and, with them, so many stories they could have told are lost.

The Sea Buckthorn's Birds

Sea buckthorn was probably introduced into the Dunrobin Castle grounds in places which were particularly windswept perhaps as a soil stabilising shrub or for the cheerful colour of its....

....bright orange berries. However, this year the berries have seemed much less startlingly orange and have been fewer, though they have still attracted....

....a variety of birds including yellowhammers and a resident robin, though it isn't clear whether they like it for its berries or for the very dense cover it offers.

However, we like it for one particular bird which is found in it during winter, a bird we hadn't seen since last March until Monday, when....

....a male blackcap was spotted at the limit of my camera's capabilities. Now it would be good to see the 'annual' female.

A Big Red Bean

Some very odd donations arrive in the charity shop where we work. This morning's example was a small polythene bag containing eight of these. I suppose normally we might have consigned them to the bin but I have seen these before, on a tropical beach thousands of miles from here, for I recollect picking them up....

....along the high-tide mark on the beautiful beach at Nyali which this house - which we called the Hoey House - looked out across - see link here.

They're obviously beans, but I never knew to which tree or shrub they belonged, assuming that they had drifted across the Indian Ocean to arrive on Kenya's shores. However, a little research on the internet found that this 6cm diameter 'sea bean' comes from the African dream herb or snuff box plant, Entada rheedii, which grows along many coasts, creeks and rivers in Africa and Australasia. It's from a type of liana with huge seed pods - there's more about it here.

The link is to a shop specialising in the sale of exotic seeds. I wish I'd looked it up earlier as a single bean is on sale for £9. We sold all the beans, with the exception of the one I bought, for £2 only a few minutes after they went on display in the charity shop window. Oh dear!

Beach Wander

I took a very gentle stroll along the beach towards Dunrobin Castle this morning enjoying some unexpected sun and a light northerly which brought in only the occasional equally light shower. There are signs of the changing seasons in the air, with....

....a lone swan flying north, it's passing advertised by the song of the air through its feathers, and....

....two skeins of geese also heading north, the first geese we've seen on the wing above Golspie in some time.

Along the shore there are plenty of oystercatchers but other than....

....cormorants, gulls and the occasional grey heron there's very little to see. 

I can't help but worry about the lack of divers and waders - even the redshanks were missing this morning - particularly when the only guillemot we've seen in some weeks was dead on the shore.

Honey Pots

I have little time for honeypots - the tourist type, that is - the places which millions of people feel they have to visit and, by doing so, often ruin. Sometimes it's possible to go to these sad sites at a time when they're at peace - this is Olympia sufficiently early in the morning for most tourists not to have arrived. When people are climbing all over it, it's impossible to sense the soul of a place and to attempt to visualise how it must have been for the people who lived in it thousands of years ago.

This is another of the sites which we managed to find at peace during our visit to Greece in 2007 - again, simply by arriving very early and enjoying it in the cool of a new morning. It's the tomb of Clytemnestra at Mycenae, a place which left me in a state of awe.

This, by contrast, is the Parthenon in Athens. We were on an organised trip and the guide had failed to turn up in good time, so we waited in the increasingly broiling heat until my self-control was at its limit - which didn't take long - at which point I departed and found....

....a little taverna whose proprietor spoiled me with his interest and impeccable courtesy, giving me the best table in the place and finishing our relationship with a shot of ouzo.