Crossbill Crossroads

If we turn right out of our gate, as we did this morning, and walk straight up the road, passing through the hamlet of Golspie Tower and up into the forestry on the slopes of Beinn Bhraggie, we come to this crossroads where the track we follow meets Queen's Drive. Within a radius of a few hundred metres of it lies the best territory for spotting....

....crossbills. We've seen them in flocks but by now they've paired up, which they do very early in the year, and produced their young. We suspect that the two we saw today were a mother and one of her young, which was so intent on feeding that....

....to the concern of the parent, it let us approach as close as we've been to this unusual species.

Nearby we spotted a yellow bird which, for a time, defied identification until we realised that we weren't recognising it because we were seeing it out of context. This cheerful singer is a siskin, one of the species we've been trying to attract onto our nyjer feeder.

The plantation around Crossbill Crossroads is relatively new, the young trees being about five metres tall, and this seems to suit both willow warblers (above) and their cousin warbler, the chiffchaffs. At this time of year the forestry is filled with the joyous songs of these small birds, both recently returned from Africa.

Our morning's bird watching was capped by the sighting of a pair of red kites, circling round and round each other high above us, and by the call of one or perhaps two cuckoos, the first we have heard this spring.

A Mikumi Memory

 I haven't written about them in some time but the memory flashes that I've had for years are becoming more frequent. A picture suddenly jumps into my mind, interrupting and often totally unrelated to whatever I am doing: like, yesterday, standing in the utility room, a moment in Mikumi National Park utterly possessed me; lingered briefly; then faded, leaving the ghost of a memory.

I was standing in the back of a Land Rover next to Mrs MW as we were driven down a rutted track from the park gate to....

....the lodge where we were staying. It was built on a low hill with the dining area at the summit and the tents - each covered by a straw roof - arranged so they gave a views of the water hole where many animals, including....

....lion, came to drink.

Mikumi is one of Tanzania's newer game parks having been established in 1964. We had been warned not to expect too much, and that, because it was close to Dar-es-Salaam, it could become crowded but we had no complaint....

....seeing plenty of game - though we noticed that none of the elephant carried any weight of ivory, the result of years of poaching.

In any case we were never the twitcher sort of tourist who has a list of what he needs see. There is as much pleasure to be had from watching a majestic giraffe standing in the heat of the day under the shade of an acacia as there is in watching....

....the seething mass of a safari ant column moving through the dry dirt intent on mischief.

I am grateful to my brain for carrying round all these picture memories, and for the frequent surprises I have on seeing them; and after each event I feel so thankful that I experienced the moments that made them, often many years ago.

Harrison's Calendars

Towards the end of almost every year of his retirement my father received a calendar from Thomas & James Harrison, the shipping line in which my grandfather Ernest was a captain and which my father served for many years as a ships' agent in East Africa with such dedication that, upon his retirement, the Harrisons' board presented him with a silver salver.

Each calendar featured a painting one of Harrison's many ships, some dating back to the company's origins when its ships were under sail - the one shown here is the Charles Souchay, seen entering the Mersey. Other calendars....

....illustrated the evolution of cargo shipping through those which had coal-fired engines which couldn't quite be trusted to....

....those that saw this country through two wars. This one, Contractor, is a typical 1930s boat and....

....this a Second World War 'Liberty' ship built in America - the picture shows the Successor passing the white cliffs of Dover.

Almost all Harrison's ships were named for a trade or profession, though Grandfather Haylett's last ship, Defender, was a little different. Harrisons' ships were good-looking but this one, Administrator, is, in my view, of a particularly elegant design. Another reason for this calendar being my favourite was that she is pictured in Dar-es-Salaam harbour, its name meaning 'Haven of Peace'.

As the world of shipping changed from mixed-cargo boats to container ships and bulk carriers, Harrisons couldn't compete alone so went into partnership with other lines, building ships like Astronomer which my father thought incredibly ugly.

Then, one year, the calendars stopped.

The Nyjer Feeder

As reported last Thursday, the chaffinches have discovered the nyjer feeder and are doing their best to empty it but now....

....they have competition in the form of both a male and....

....a female house sparrow.

I don't understand what's going on! The feeder has been available most of the winter and we've been watching it in the hope of seeing the usual nyjer clients, namely goldfinches and siskins, and hardly seen any birds using it. So why are the other birds suddenly so interested?

Happily, the feeder is also being visited by a very handsome pair of siskins but....

....the goldfinches, while still around, seem to be ignoring it. Instead, we observed a pair poking around the woodwork on the side of the garage. We couldn't work out what they were up to until....

....a close-up revealed that they were looking for and collecting spiders' web, presumably to use in their nest building.

The Doll

Our walk today was in the area called The Doll, a crofting community where most of the houses are now private while a few are on active crofts. It's just to the south of Brora, an easy ten-minute drive from our house, and the walk consists of little more energetic than following a well-made track, first of all through forestry which, as they were making very clear this morning, is now....

....owned by some very vociferous willow warblers, recently returned from their winter holidays in Africa.

After passing through a deer fence the land opens up so one has good views across Loch Brora. At one time, before crofts were invented, a small community existed here, evidence of which can be found in the....

....remains of stone walls which wind across the landscape. A quick look at a....

....satellite picture shows the extent of the human activities, which include what may be sheep pens and 'kale yards' - areas used for growing vegetables - as well as buildings which may have been small houses.

Today the inhabitants are sheep, the red deer which come down from the hill and, for a few months, the recently returned wheatears.

Our walk over we sat on a bench on the banks of the River Brora in light drizzle with our feet....

....surrounded by masses of wood anemones.

Violet & Blue

We walked through the woodland of Golspie Glen this morning, most of the trees still leafless and clothed in lichen, meeting not a soul but finding....

....the year's first dog violet, pale blue and very lonely amongst the grass stalks in a clearing, but later, under a step leading down to the burn, spotted....

....several more, much darker. Then, on a south-facing sunny bank, we saw....

....the first bluebells of the year, just emerging from their winter sleep.

The wildflowers' colours are changing with the coming season, from yellows and whites to violets and blue.

The Doves

In the heat of the day when, as a boy, I lay in bed for my enforced after-lunch 'rest' I would hear the hoo-hoo of the doves in the frangipani trees along the side of the house, their soft call laid across the scream of the crickets. At school in England I would think of them as African doves but in fact they weren't, that species being confined to the Sahel areas to the south of the Sahara desert; they were more likely to have been ring-necked or Cape doves.

These days, in a much colder climate, it is this dove I hear, the Eurasian collared dove, a very successful species which has spread across the lands of the northern hemisphere and, somehow, crossed the Atlantic to the Americas. It doesn't look much different from the ring-necked dove nor, as far as I can remember, does its call differ so, when I hear it, I am transported back to Africa.

Bird Food

I was pleased to see this male chaffinch on the nijer feeder this morning: we still have a bag full of the seed and it was good to know that we had a potential for a much expanded market for it amongst the chaffinch population - until I noticed....

....a pair of goldfinches waiting patiently in the tree for a turn on the feeder. Happily....

....the chaffinch moved on and one of the goldfinches enjoyed a brief meal, hopefully enough to persuade the pair to come back for more.

Food is very much on the minds of a pair of blackbirds in the garden. I had cause to water the lawn this afternoon and this brought the worms to the surface, much to this male's benefit. They obviously have hatchlings nearby which are fine in the warm weather we're currently enjoying but, by the standards of the north of Scotland, it is still very early in the season and - heaven forbid - the weather may yet turn cold.

Haar and Low Tide

The promise of a bright, sunny spring morning was dashed when the haar came rolling in off the sea, carried inland by a light northeaster and masking an exceptionally low tide. It isn't often that the kelp out in deeper water is uncovered, a....

....happy event for the gulls which profited from the marine life unexpectedly exposed.

The haar didn't last long, breaking up after the tide turned to bring the sea seeping back across exposed sand and rocks....

....marooning the oystercatchers, now in smartly-dressed pairs ready for mating.

The Cliff Avenue House

One of the miracles of the internet is that it connects people who would otherwise never have communicated. I say this because I have just received some comments on earlier posts about the last house we had in Mombasa (above) from someone who lived in it between 1979 and 1995. One of the comments he made was, "We had great memories too." Yes, indeed, it was a house of very happy memories.

I would be very grateful if the correspondent could add a comment on this post so I can get in touch with him.

Thank You....

Thank you to all the people who didn't go to Littleferry this morning to walk through woods full of spring birdsong and out onto....

....the miles of totally deserted beach where, washed up along the tideline was....

....this mass of what we took to be the eggs of some sea creature. Thanks too for not....

....being at the mouth of Loch Fleet to disturb the raft of eider which was battling the currents of an incoming tide, observed by a small flock of oystercatchers; and thank you....

....for not sitting on the bench on the shore of Loch Fleet so we could enjoy it without interruption while we watched the sea flood the mudflats and....

....a beautiful peacock which was taking advantage of the daffodils which someone has kindly planted along the shore.

Thank Goodness there are still forgotten backwaters of this country which the bank holiday crowds have yet to discover.