Dismal Grey

Our weather at the moment is dominated by a muddle of low pressure areas to the north of us one of which is a named storm - Debi. These have brought low cloud and rain but only moderate to strong easterly winds, just energetic enough to stir up the muddy waters of the North Sea which has continued to exploit the damage done by Babet. Yesterday was a truly miserable day of low cloud and moderate to high winds, the light almost gone by four in the afternoon.

The front along by Dunrobin Castle has had seaweed and other - often human - detritus thrown across it but....

....the sea has broken through the rock defenses right in front of the castle, prompting a hurried delivery of large rocks to fill the gap.

The wildlife hasn't had a chance to recover. On our walk we saw three oystercatchers, the only waders, and not a single living cormorant - though there were plenty of corpses in amongst the seaweed. The only birds which seemed to be enjoying themselves were....

....the gulls which had congregated in large flocks at certain points along the shore where they appeared to be braving the breakers in order to feed on something being washed out of the seaweed - though a close look at the gulls doesn't show them actually feeding. I suppose it's possible that they're just having fun in the waves, just like my brother and I used to have in our inner tyre tubes in the breakers along the beach at Nyali. 

Orange Peel

Last night the thermometer in our back garden dropped to zero for the first time this winter yet there was no ice on the puddles nor much frost across the ground - except in this one place where the thistles - if that's what they are - seemed to attract it.

We took ourselves to Drummuie where last night's lingering mist was just being chased from the trees by the first sun of the day, to walk some of the miles of....

....forestry tracks that wind their way up and along the slopes of Beinn Bhraggie, finding little stirring in the way of bird life but, to our considerable surprise, finding....

....more orange peel fungus than we've ever seen before. Usually we come across it in single 'flowers' or small 'bouquets' but this colony stretched for some ten meters along the side of the track....

....as if someone had walked just ahead of us peeling a very large orange.

Small Bird News

It's some time since I wrote about the small birds in the garden because there really oughtn't to be any. The one-time hockey pitch next door is being turned into a housing estate and we've had heavy machinery and human noise for weeks - yet many of our birds have stuck with us and, to put it mildly, I'm very grateful to them because living right next to a building site isn't much fun - the arrow points to a surprisingly well-frequented peanut feeder - and they have been an endless source of interest.

If any bird was going to survive the proximity of a building site it was the house sparrows, and they have not disappointed, nor....

....has the noise deterred the tit family - great, blue and coal. In fact, I think there are more coal tits than ever but that may be something to do with the amount of sunflower seeds they're being given.

It's more of a surprise that one of our most self-effacing birds, the dunnock, is another that hasn't been bothered. In fact, there appear to be more of them around than in previous years which, since they are one of my favourite birds, makes me very happy.

I don't know whether the building site has discouraged robins but, in contrast to previous years where there was stiff competition for the territory of our garden, this year only one robin is in evidence. He's pictured here in a surprising setting for so late in he year - beside a tomato plant.

There are blackbirds in the garden but this is a transitory time of year for them as the residents have to put up with various Scandinavian incomers, usually with black plumage and black beaks, passing through. This is a local male.

Song thrushes are a not uncommon sight in the garden and they don't seem to be fewer this year than before, which bodes well for their singing on summer evenings.

Well, that's the good news. The less good is that some species which were regulars have disappeared, in particular....

....the greenfinches. Since there were plenty coming into the garden just before the diggers arrived I can only assume that they don't like the disturbance.

Finally, there are several species which we used to see but don't any more, like the siskins, the red polls, the woodpeckers, the bullfinches, the blackcaps and the long-tailed tits. This may be nothing to do with the disturbance but I can only hope that they return once the houses are built and, with a bit of luck, full of people who like to feed the birds.

Ozymandias

We woke to a strong, cold southwesterly bringing us biting drops of rain so, to avoid it, we took to the woods for our morning walk, finding almost all the leaves now off the deciduous trees except the beech. This annual and, this year, rather sudden leaf fall effectively hides the fungi but we did find this....

....rather fine specimen, all by itself under a protecting exposed root. The flaky cap, its size,....

....the pinkish stem and the shape of the 'skirt' - the collar on the stem - suggest that it's a shaggy parasol.

As the leaf-fall covers some things, others it exposes, so the memorial to Harriet Sutherland, 1806 - 1868, normally almost invisible, is one of the winners. Poor woman, she stares out stoically at the forestry that encloses her small clearing; few visit her in her remote corner of the woods; her memorial is deteriorating, various knobs and small spires falling off it. Her main achievements seem to have been to produce eleven children for the second Duke of Sutherland, her first cousin, and to have been a friend of Queen Victoria.

Whenever I see a memorial such as this I recite Shelley's poem, Ozymandias.

The Guide

This is one of the many guides who helped make our time in the many camps and lodges we stayed at during our travels in Africa so enjoyable. I found his picture the other day and, looking at it, remembered how unusually cheerful, willing and helpful he was.

He seemed to go out of his way to help us. At night, lions came close to the lodge where we were staying at Saadani in Tanzania, so we would often find....

....their pug marks along the sand at the top of the beach. I wanted to see one of these lions so, one evening, as we were the bar sipping our sundowners, he came across and summoned us. It was pitch black but, if we'd like a ride in one of the lodge's Land Rovers, he could take us to a spot on the road near the lodge where a lion was lying up in the bush. We went and, sure enough, we could see the animal's eyes glow in the light of a torch.

This is early one morning when I went with him to the small water hole which lions and other animals used at night, and he pointed out the lions' tracks. This spot was yards from the lodge's restaurant.

He was 'our' guide, so he went with us on our expeditions. This is at the end of a three-hour walk through the bush, with the sun setting and an expectant hush settling across the land. The man with him, toting the Kalashnikov, is a ranger from the park authority.

The terrible thing is that, rack my brain as I might, I couldn't remember our guide's name. It was something like Goodluck or Goodnews.... No it wasn't, it was Goodwill. What a lovely, and appropriate, name.

Kopje

My brain works in peculiar ways these days, sometimes throwing a picture memory at me. This happened the other day when I had a vivid, almost immersive recollection of this kopje at the back of our house in Rhodesia.

A kopje is an isolated hillock, often formed of giant and sometimes spectacularly balanced boulders, which rises out of the African veld. It's an Afrikaans word which is used right up into Tanzania and Kenya. Probably the nearest equivalent in Britain are the tors of Southwest England.

We often took our Alsatian, Marx, up there on one of our long walks with him. It was one of....

....many in the school estate - I think when we were there, that its grounds extended to some 4,000 acres, mostly untamed bush - and, from the top of 'our' kopje more could be seen disappearing into the distance.

The ones at Bernard Mizeki seemed to have been formed in places where a hard rock, such as granite, had been intruded into a softer rock which had later been eroded away, leaving the standing boulders of granite.

The front veranda of our house looked out across its front garden to another kopje.

Because they were steep and broken and thick with vegetation, one had to exercise some caution if one wanted to climb them. They had the reputation of being the haunt of snakes and leopards, though the only animals I can recall inhabiting them were the dassies, rock hyraxes, which cursed us for disturbing their peace. 

They weren't always inhospitable to man. We know this from the many superb rock paintings which are found in the natural caves in kopjes. This is from the Markwe Caves but even Bernard Mizeki's small kopjes had the occasional painting.

Back Yard Ultra

We were taking a gentle stroll along the coast path yesterday afternoon beside a strangely quiet sea, with the haar beginning to blow in, when our peace was disturbed by....

....the tramp of runners' feet. This was, apparently, the Dunrobin Castle Back Yard Ultra, a race in which the competitors follow a four-mile course but have to do it in under an hour, then have to line up at the end of that hour for the next lap. This goes on, in true US fashion, until all but one of the competitors has dropped out, at which point the remaining one is the winner. Since some can manage well over 50 laps, the race goes on day and night for two days and more.

Ah, well, it takes all sorts....