Storm Gerrit Aftermath

Yesterday was one of those days when daylight never really happened. All day a low, heavy murk was chased across us by a vicious easterly wind which gusted well over gale force, bringing frequent hard showers. Storm Gerrit finally cleared during the night leaving a legacy of tattered clouds and line after line of breakers marching in to shore to....

....hurl themselves at the newly-rebuilt sea defences which run below Dunrobin Castle, cutting the coast path in several places.

We still  haven't discovered what it is that spurs the gulls into almost suicidal attempts to land on the water to feed, risking being caught and tumbled by the breakers. We think it may be the eggs of one of the fly species which plague the beaches in summer which are washed out of the rotting seaweed by the waves. Whatever it is, judging by their numbers and efforts, it's a gull's delicacy.

The Rock Dove Flock

From a distance the barley stubble in the field just across the Golspie Burn from our house may look empty of life but often it's alive with....

....rock doves, more than we have seen in the past couple of years. They've become quite used to the human and dog traffic along the old coast track, staying - at least partly - hidden until we're quite close, before rising....

....in a dense mass to move a few tens of metres further along the field.

The truly wild rock dove, which is what these are, is relatively rare, being found only on the coasts of northern Scotland and Ireland. Unfortunately for them, their half-sibling, the urban pigeon, is embarrassingly abundant so the wild rock dove is lumped in with them as 'green' - 'common' - when their conservation status is calculated.

In some ways, therefore, it's good to see so many of them but in normal circumstances this abundance of good food should attract predators, such as peregrines: of them this area is sadly lacking.

The Nahodha's Chest

My father bought this Arab chest off a nahodha, the captain of an ocean-going dhow, in Zanzibar harbour some time in the 1930s, so it's a good ninety years old. The nahodahs would buy a new sea chest each year while loading in the ports of the Persian Gulf and then sell it along the East African coast - see earlier blog post about the chest here.

It has always been a good place to 'park' things so it was in use yesterday lunchtime, with a couple of celebratory bottles, a laptop and a speaker on it - and I suddenly wondered what on earth the nahodha would have thought if he'd seen his chest.

The bottles of wine, both from France, he'd have understood as trade goods. The laptop and speaker would have seemed like minor miracles - which, when I think of it, they are - but I don't think it would have taken him too long to catch on to some of their more simple functions. I say that having seen how totally at home his descendants in places like Tanzania are with the technology they access through their mobile phones. Finally, he wouldn't have been phased by the electricity that runs the laptop: the Gulf Arabs were frequent visitors to the offices where my mother worked, coming in, not on business but to see the Beit al Ajaib's electric lift.

Finally, I hope he'd have been pleased to see that his chest has been given years of love. We keep it as a memento of my parents' time on Zanzibar, the place where they met and married. 

Season's Greetings

 

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas!

What's in a Name?

I have four mature African violets scattered around the house at the moment and all of them are in flower. When they flower during the year seems to be a bit random but they all seem to make an effort at this wintery time, just when one most needs their cheerful colour.

I love them because, as well as being beautiful and very long-suffering, they remind me of Africa coming, as they do originally, from the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania and south-eastern Kenya. Sadly, this exotic heritage isn't reflected in their scientific name, Saintpaulia, which is in honour of Baron von Saint Paul-Illaire, a German colonial official who is credited with their discovery (by Europeans) in German East Africa (now Tanzania) in 1892. How much more appropriate it would have been had they been called Usambaria.

I think I may have been to the Usambaras. When we moved from Dar-es-Salaam to Mombasa in 1950 my mother, Richard and I stayed with people inland from Tanga. To quote from her autobiography, "The next day Marjory decided we would take a picnic up to the Agricultural Station in the Usambaras, and we set off in the car with an African driver and climbed up into the hills."

I have no recollection of that day - I would have been five at the time - but I do love the way that these two intrepid British ladies, along with two small children, 'decided' to take a picnic into the wilds of Africa.

Sticky Snow

It wasn't supposed to snow overnight but it did, this the view from our bedroom window when we drew the curtains at 7.45; and since then it hasn't stopped snowing though the forecasts keep promising it'll change to rain shortly.

It's very odd snow which has been falling in increasingly large flakes as the morning has progressed. Its main characteristic - after being wet and cold - is that it sticks to the first thing it hits. So, as well as the bird feeders....

....the branches and twigs of the trees are covered in it, few of the flakes making it as far as the ground.

We walked out into it, to find that, as well as being sticky snow, it's also very slippery snow, which is probably why the....

....A9 is virtually deserted of traffic. Looking on the on-line map, there are hold-ups in several places, including north of Brora, north of Helmsdale and near the turn to Skelbo Woods to the south of us.

Once home we set about the most important task, feeding the small birds. The wire cage is to keep the jackdaws out but the main problem is that the grain is rapidly covered by more sticky snow.

Grey, Grey, Grey

The weather is evidently exhausted from the effort of yesterday's spectacular cloud display, the colours reverting to a uniform, dismal grey: grey sky, grey sea, grey rocks, and a grey....

....heron fishing along the low-tide mark, while high above the....

....skeins of pink-footed geese call as they pass over us, illogically heading north but presumably that's where their chosen forage-field is today. One wonders which amongst the hundred-plus geese decided on today's field.

By early afternoon a cold, sleety rain was falling, the garden birds had given up on the day, and the heather hillside around the duke on his plinth at the summit of Bheinn Bhraggie was turning grey - from the winter's first dusting of snow.