Where Have They Gone? - 3

I spent the Easter and Summer terms of 1963 as a teacher and estate worker at Bernard Mizeki College, a boys' boarding school in the bush of what was then Southern Rhodesia. I was given plenty of responsibility, I was treated as an adult, I was worked exhaustingly hard - and I loved it.

I wasn't the only volunteer. Michael (back left) and Malcolm (foreground left) were out there under the auspices of Voluntary Service Overseas, and we messed together in one of the staff houses.

I met some very dedicated people there and the thought of seeing and working with them again was one of the factors that prompted Mrs MW and I in 1967 to chose to go to what was then Ian Smith's Rhodesia, to teach at the same school.

During the three years of our contract we renewed my old acquaintances, we met many more similar-minded people, and....

....we met relatives of mine who had long settled in the country - picture shows me with my cousin Charlotte in a maize field on one of the Kirkmans' big farms.

When, very regretfully, we left Bernard Mizeki, the leaving card from our colleagues, both teachers and support workers, reflected the variety of people who worked there.

After returning to England we kept in touch with several of them, and had news of others through them. Sadly, as always happens, the connections steadily broke down and, to make matters worse, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe was plunged into a vicious civil war.

Despite this, and despite the decades that have passed, we remained in contact with a few, so we learned that many left the country, scattered to South Africa, Canada, New Zealand and the UK, and some died well before their time.

The contacts with those happy days are now very tenuous, but because our time there was so happy, they remains very precious to us.

Solitude

I consider myself exceptionally fortunate that I can walk a few hundred yards from our house and find myself trudging along paths where I am unlikely to meet anyone - not because I want to avoid human contact but because I am one of those people who craves occasional solitude, and within that solitude a time to think about life without interruption.

On my morning walk today I encountered no-one from the time I left my front door to the moment I returned, refreshed if a bit damp from the rain; and part of that refreshment came from the wildlife that surrounded me on that walk, the song thrush calling for the first time in the trees by our house, the coal tits squabbling over nesting sites and mates, and the first small wildflower of spring....

....a solitary daisy which, in a few weeks' time, I would hardly have noticed.

Unfortunately, I returned to a deserted garden, deserted, that is, except for the cause of its emptiness - the male sparrowhawk which we're feeding, indirectly, at some cost.

Littleferry

Littleferry was beautiful this morning when we arrived at about nine-thirty, with a brisk southwesterly blowing, the temperature soaring to a dizzy 8C, and plenty of cheering sunshine. However, the first thing we saw as we dropped down onto Littleferry's main sandy beach was....

....a dead razorbill.

Happily, this was the only dead bird but it formed a high proportion of the birds at Littleferry as there were so few. So, whereas a few weeks ago we'd have seen perhaps fifty eider, today....

....we found just one pair swimming in the entrance to the loch.

This might all have been very depressing but we were greatly cheered by hearing the songs of the first....

....skylarks of the year, at least three of them, all flying and singing high above the links. These are, I think, the males who have arrived early to stake out their territories.

The weather seemed to spur us into what was, by our standards, a long walk which took us along the banks of the main pool of....

....Loch Fleet, where there were very few birds and no sign of the seals which usually adorn the further sandbanks in this picture.

So.... a very enjoyable morning's walking but, oh!, we are seeing so little wildlife these days!

Searching for Spring

It's the time of year when exciting things Natural are miserably scarce in the woods, so I find myself thrilled to spot something as 'ordinary' as this outbreak of orange mould on a dead twig or....

....a couple of small witches' butter fungal 'flowers' on a dead gorse branch; and I begin to wonder whether, in order to get my daily Nature kick, I should set out to become a world expert on....

....the bewildering array of mosses and lichens, of which there seem to be plenty around even through the worst of the winter months.

Our walk today was promising to be as barren as ever when....

....I heard a bird calling in the pine plantation by Roe Corner, a call I didn't recognise but which the Merlin app identified as a mistle thrush. It was a short, repetitive call, the sound not dissimilar to a song thrush's call but with a very limited repertoire; glorious enough in the circumstances for me to stand for ten minutes listing to it.

Sadly, for all my searching I could not find the bird in the thick tangle of undergrowth but, nearing home, I came across a very welcome but unwelcome sign of the coming spring....

....the first squashed frog of the year.

Hungry Birds

We've had warm sunrises, with skeins of pink-footed geese calling as they fly past each morning, following the coast northwards to their foraging fields.

We've had snow, just a dusting of it, but strange, powdery snow that was exceptionally slippery underfoot and very persistent despite the warm sunshine.

In these conditions the small birds should be eating us out of house and home but, with the exception of the blue, great and coal tits round the front of the house, they're hardly eating anything, instead....

....gazing longingly from afar at feeders overflowing with good food but loath to swoop down to it because....

....you-know-who hangs around hoping, expecting them to do just that.

The Butter Dish

I remember this butter dish from the early days of my courtship of the girl who would later become Mrs MW. She had a pleasant room in one of the modern girl's blocks at the university we shared and, while my room was a tip, hers was always beautifully furnished and kept - to the extent that she would ask friends to join her there for afternoon tea.

I later discovered that the dish came from a pottery run by the monks at Prinknash* Abbey, which was a mile or so from Mrs MW's parents' house, so when I visited her at her home we would sometimes walk together down the beautiful Cotswold lane that led to the abbey.

That walk had another attraction - a small quarry dug into the limestone bank at the side of the lane. This rock contained....

....some superb Jurassic fossils. This is the first one I found, which I kept for many years until I passed my mineral and fossil collection on to one of my grand-daughters. It's a brachiopod, probably a Terebratulid, about 30mm long.

This one, from the same quarry, came under the broad but rather beautiful title of Rhynchonella.

So the Prinknash butter dish is some sixty years old and has been with us on all our travels. It's the sort of souvenir I treasure because it brings back such happy memories of so many people, places and events while at the same time still serving its original purpose today.

* Pronounced 'prinnish'

Sunshine and Sparrowhawk

We've seen the sun occasionally during the last few days, which makes a pleasant change from the late January to early February record, even enjoying two fine sunrises, interesting because, as the sun moves north, they are the last time we will see it rise from the far horizon until late this year when it moves back south again.

Between times we've seen a miserable mix of weather, with snow, sleet, rain, strong winds and temperatures struggling to climb above 5C and, on a couple of nights, dropping towards zero to give us a hard ground frost. 

My usual wet-weather walks have been curtailed by the estate deciding that now would be a good time to improve the track towards Loch Lunndhaid, which has turned it into a bit of a mud bath.

Whatever the weather the sparrowhawk has been busy in the back garden. When he's in hunting mood he's very good at making use of the planks of the wooden ramp, built to enable old people to get safely down to the back garden whatever the weather.

When he's not in hunting mood he sits in a conspicuous position and surveys his realm - but note the way he has one foot on either side of his perch, perhaps to enable him to swivel round and take off quickly in whichever direction his prey has appeared.

He is a very handsome bird, keeping himself very smart whatever the weather. We have a fine view of him from our sitting room window as do the small birds hiding in the gorse bush at the bottom of the garden; and they have to be very patient as he's quite happy to sit on his perch for an hour or more at a time.

Wintery Littleferry

We were at Littleferry this morning a few minutes before high tide, with the incoming current strong where it's funnelled in through the constricted mouth of Loch Fleet.

It was good to see oystercatchers back after the recent blowy weather. Look carefully at the centre of the picture where there's a lone turnstone with them; and, a little further along the beach, we spotted two sanderlings.

Making our way back across the links, with snow on the hills beyond Brora, we found....

....a dead juvenile guillemot alongside a dog's ball - there's a story somewhere there!

On our way home we stopped briefly on the banks of Loch Fleet, happily in the few moments the sun chose to come out.  There was little to see in the way of wildlife on the still waters of the loch but we did find....

....a small mixed flock of shelduck, some of the males coming in to their mating finery, and mallard.

Sunshine!

This morning, after nearly three weeks of grey skies and strong, cold easterly winds, the wind has backed into the northwest, the clouds have cleared and the sun has come out - so we took a gentle walk along the coastline towards Dunrobin Castle, spending time sitting on our favourite bench soaking up the sun and searching for wildlife.

There wasn't much to see. This boulder spit which is exposed at low tide is usually a prime hangout for the shore birds but all we saw and heard were a few cormorants, redshanks, crows and gulls. The paucity of birds isn't really surprising as this section of coast will have been very exposed to the easterly winds, so normal inhabitants like the curlews will have retreated inland to forage for worms in the farmers' fields.

There was one surprise: having hardly seen any of them this winter, a few rock doves were sitting on the boulders in their usual place near the cormorants - see earlier post here about these birds.

All along this coast there are men in big yellow machines dumping massive lumps of rock to repair the damaged sea defences. This one was just below the castle at a point where the waves now seem to inflict an annual toll of damage.

It's lovely to see the sun and watch the colours reappear in the landscape but , as always, there is a price to pay. The car this morning was crusted with ice and the forecast for the next week is for more frosts, sleet and snow.

Roe Deer Disappearance

Roe deer were a not uncommon sight in the forestry and fields between our house and the village. Sometimes we saw as many as three at one time, and we've seen young which were only weeks old.

All that changed following the hunts that took place across estate lands last autumn: since August we haven't seen a single roe deer.

However, we're beginning to find increasing signs of them. This is a section of our route down to the village which we've called The Avenue, and along it we're seeing....

....fresh footprints almost every day - which is surprising, because there is construction activity on the hill just above it where the farmer is turning over some of his fields to a camping/caravan park.

One of the best places to see roe deer used to be from Roe Corner, where they were often to be seen grazing across this field.

Today, as we walked past this point and through....

....Speckled Wood - so called for the species of butterfly found there in summer - for the first time we spotted....

....fresh deer dung.

So the roe deer are there, but there when we're not.

Never mind. For the time being we need to be patient and find our excitement in smaller wildlife, like this blue tit, pictured in Speckled Wood.