The Rock

Yes, I know, it's only a boring rock sitting beside the track and minding its own business but to people like me it has great importance.

You see, when one gets a bit old, a rock like the one on the left in this picture is precious: it's somewhere to sit and rest and do what older people should be good at: nothing.

The trouble is that, for reasons which are probably to do with the ice age, there are precious few well-placed, comfortable rocks beside Golspie's tracks. This one happens to be ideally located, just under a mile from home and on a track which is frequented by few people.

So, today, I walked to the rock and sat down for a well-earned rest. The hills are very quiet now, with little bird song, but a pair of buzzards began calling high above me and, being very aware that creatures often call when they aren't very happy about something they're seeing, I searched the skies and found....

....what was agitating them - an eagle, I think, probably a golden eagle, at the extreme range of my camera.

We see buzzards, red kites and sparrowhawks fairly frequently but an eagle is a bit special, so I sat for some time to watch it wheel across they sky with the agitated buzzards in close pursuit.

I set off home as soon as the buzzards fell silent, and had just realised that I hadn't seen a single butterfly when....

....this beautiful common blue took flight right in front of me, landing shortly thereafter on a convenient leaf.

By the time I reached home I had been out for about an hour and seen just two butterflies; and this is the beginning of August.

A Walk to the Village

We found the first signs of the approach of autumn when we walked through the woods to the village this morning, including the first....

....rowan berries ripening on the trees.

Although we have had some rain - a rather miserable total of 10mm over the last few days....

....there are very few fungi in evidence. This may be one of the brittlegills, the slugs having taken advantage of the rain to have have a meal off it.

There continue to be very few butterflies around. Those on the wing include a few whites - that this one looks so battered is testament to its determination to cross the busy A9 - some painted ladies, a tortoiseshell, a couple of common blues, a handful of fritillaries, and....

....the first red admiral for some weeks, this one enjoying sipping at a very cheerful pink buddleia, one of several colours which are in full flower in our garden and busy with bees, if not butterflies.

On each of the last three days Mrs MW has walked down to the village through the woods and seen a roe doe, but today this deer was accompanied by....

....her young.

'Little Black Quasha'

A few days ago one of our daughters found this little book stored away in her attic. We remember it well for it was given to us....

....by our very dear friends Bibi ad David Witt at Christmas 1967, when we had been teaching for only a few months in what was then Ian Smith's breakaway state of Rhodesia.

Why Bibi Witt, for it is her handwriting on the title page, should have chosen this particular book as a Christmas present for a couple who were, at that time, childless, I have no idea.

In 1967 David and Bibi had three children, Pom-Pom, Jo-Jo and Faldi, and were working at a tiny secondary school way out in the bush, and we had been invited to spend Christmas in their home. I don't remember anything particular about that Christmas - we spent a great deal of time in their company during our three years in Rhodesia - but we loved being with them and the children, and a happier family you could not imagine.

So when I opened the book the other day for the first time in many, many years, I did so with some trepidation, for its contents probably do not sit easily with present cultural tensions, but I found, as the book progressed, nothing that would upset any broad-minded person, particularly when they look at this book from the perspectives of the 1960s.

In fact the book is very much a morality tale, with Little Black Quasha doing all the things a good girl should do, and being....

....suitably rewarded.

Like so many children's books, this one has a fair amount of graphic violence in it, but by the end all the good things have been done and the world left in a better state than when Quasha found it.

I'm very grateful to our daughter for keeping the book so carefully for it brings back a flood of joyous memories of Mrs MW and my early lives together, and of some of the beautiful people we met in our travels.

The Crossing

I walked up the adder track this morning in the vague hope that one of these rare beasts might be out sunning itself but realistically this seemed unlikely as the temperature was struggling to reach 16C and, to our considerable relief, we have had some rain in the last few days - though the total was a disappointing 7mm.

However, there were some insects to enjoy, including three fritillaries feeding on the ragwort, a dragonfly which refused to settle for a picture, and a scattering of bees, flies and hoverflies.

A family of warblers - I have no idea which variety - has taken up residence in the undergrowth along the edge of the fields and seem to enjoy scolding me each time I pass, fields....

....in which the sheep seem quite certain, from the way they were all lying down, that more rain was approaching.

However the main recollection I hold of this gentle walk into the hills was when, on my way home, a deer suddenly crossed the road about fifty metres in front of me - sadly, far too quickly for me to take its picture but slow enough for me to think it was a red deer; and red deer are supposed to have been shot out of this area.

That momentary sighting transported me back to Tanzania, to the small game reserve of Saadani, a reserve which is unusual in that it is on the coast, and of seeing....

....a single antelope running across the road in front of our vehicle.

I was fortunate to get this picture, particularly as the animal here is one that is fairly common in Saadani but less so elsewhere in Tanzania. It's a kongoni, also known as a hartebeest, a largish antelope with an unusual arrangement of horns.

A kongoni hasn't come to mind in years. It was a good memory.

The Story Behind A Picture

The photo of my parents, accompanied by my brother's dog, Susie, was taken in the front drive of the last house we had in Mombasa, which was located almost at the end of Cliff Avenue and had a superb view out across the entrance to Kilindini Harbour. They are standing in the drive with Cliff Avenue beyond them. The tree with the red flowers is a Uganda flame.

It's an unusual photo in that it's in colour. We never had a camera that could take colour pictures so this was taken by someone else. It may have been my aunt Dorothy- she was known in the family as Dolly -  who visited them in the early months of 1959, as I know she had a colour camera. Further, in her 'Life' of my father my mother writes, "Dolly took a lot of snaps of our visit and these we have amongst our transparencies."

Further still, my father would have been 57 then, and my mother 47, which looks about right.

The picture was taken either on a Saturday or Sunday as my father is in shorts. He often went to the office on a Saturday morning, being much involved with sport at the Sports Club through the lunchtime and afternoon. Only very rarely did he go to work on a Sunday. My mothers frock also suggests it is Saturday: had it been Sunday she would have been a little more formally dressed as she would be going to church.

It's a disorganised picture, which suggests it was taken almost as an afterthought, perhaps when my aunt, if it was she, was leaving to return to England. The car would have been parked to the left of where the photographer is standing, or it may be that they were waiting for the company driver, Gabriel, to bring the car from the office. He would then take the ladies to the port - Dolly sailed 'home' on the BI ship SS Kenya - and then dropped my mother back at the house when she'd seen her sister-in-law off.

I think that most people who are taking such a photograph would make some effort to organise their subjects. That they aren't organised again suggest that Dorothy took it as she was a retiring and somewhat nervous lady, the sort who would never boss anyone around.

Elsewhere in her 'Life' of my father, my mother wrote that Dolly was in Mombasa for the Queen's birthday, which was on April 21st.

So, I would guess that this picture was taken in April of 1959, on a Saturday, the day the photographer, Dolly, was to board the SS Kenya for passage 'home' through the Suez Canal.

Coast Path

It was some weeks since we last walked along the coast path north of Golspie so we decided yesterday to return to what is one of our favourite walks.

Over the years we have been visiting it the beach has changed considerably. For example, along this section there used to be sand, which made for pleasant walking, but the sea kept taking it away so there's very little left now.

We had the pleasure of encountering some shore birds, like this superbly camouflaged ringed plover....

....this juvenile black-headed gull, and....

....a dozen or so redshanks.

Out in the firth gannets were diving - an adult in the foreground and two juveniles further out.

While walking north to the castle with the wind behind us was fairly easy, it was gusting so strongly that we had to return through the protection of the woods where....

....we found this rather fine fungus, perhaps a parasol mushroom.

Wildlife News

We're being subjected to a constant and rather depressing west to northwesterly wind which gusts to almost gale force, along with grey skies and occasional showers. While the air temperature struggles to reach 18C, it feels cold outdoors.

This weather is having a miserable affect on the wildlife. The meadow between our development and the A9 is a mass of wildflowers yet the only butterfly I saw despite sitting, looking for a quarter of an hour, was a white. It's the same in our garden where....

....this tortoiseshell has put in a regular appearance, while a white and....

 ....this rather battered painted lady have been the only other butterflies seen over the last few days.

The one place where one can find butterflies in any numbers is in Speckled Wood where the speckled woods are doing their best to fly in challenging conditions.

The sound of birdsong continues in the woods, though not at the same exuberant volume as a few weeks ago, most of the birds concentrating on feeding their young. As well as contending with the weather they also have to worry about.... 

....the resident female sparrowhawk. She killed a small bird yesterday morning on the roadway in front of our house and then flew off with the pathetic little corpse before I could take a picture. Then she was back in the late afternoon....

....hunting for more.

We haven't seen a male replacing the one that killed itself in our garden a few weeks ago so can only hope that her activity indicates that, despite the loss of her mate, she has been able to rear a brood.