Natural highs and lows

Back in 2018, a post on a social media feed of the Peatbog Faeries alerted me to another Skye band, Niteworks. M elding Gaelic song forms with techno and house beats, Niteworks gave the celtic fusion dial a different spin, which to these ears sounded a little like Kraftwerk meets Clannad. After the upheavals of 2020, when Megan and I began to blend our musical influences and CD collections, Niteworks was not on our horizon, but streaming service Spotify had other ideas. In amongst tunes by Martyn Bennett, Peatbog Faeries, Shooglenifty, Talisk and Valtos, we were fed the occasional Niteworks track. The celtic fusion scene features a lot of collaborative work, and the band's modus operandi of having sung or spoken Gaelic in most tracks has introduced us to even more music artists, like Sian and Beth Malcolm. Niteworks were now our go-to mix and we realised that we ought to try to see them live, but with one thing and another, the opportunity just did not come along. Unfortunately, e

On a dreich and dank November morning, on an island contemplating months of wild weather and long nights, thoughts inevitably turn towards jigsaws. Even a rudimentary scan through my social media feed shows that our puzzling season peaks between December and March, and this year we have a new dining table to christen. However, I suspect that this Winter might be a little different, as back in the Spring, we upgraded our television. Megan wasn't totally enamoured about the prospect at first, but once we realised that the online experience was equal to or better than live tv, allowing us to watch the sorts of things we want to watch, when we wanted to watch them, she was completely on board. Quite quickly, Megan discovered that even if it was blowing a hoolie outside or it was dark or we were feeling under the weather, we could still be watching wildlife, and from the comfort of the sofa. And so followed a growing list of Youtube sites with 24/7 access to wildlife around the globe. H

We've been on holiday, experienced some rather pleasant weather, caught up with family and friends and returned home just before Storm Whoever hit Orkney. Now, here I am writing a blogpost whilst rain lashes the windows and all thoughts of colourful leaves have disappeared downwind at a rate of knots.  In our absence, Cookie and Mocha were well looked after in the comfort of their own home by Auntie Kat who, despite an allergy, is not anti-cat. It all started very early one morning, bleary-eyed and barely awake, stumbling out of bed at 5am to catch the morning sailing from Stromness to Scrabster. This was followed by a chilly drive to Inverness as the climate control module doesn't work in my car and, although at any point during the Summer I could have arranged for it to be fixed, we're now into Baltic season and a second hand unit off Ebay is awaiting the services of a skilled mechanic. Once in Inverness, I dropped off some books at Leakey's Bookshop and we hit variou

One day much earlier in the year, in a flurry of activity, we began work on digging a pond in the front garden. For a variety of reasons, only one of which was the weather, things did not progress any further, leaving a bank and ditch in the middle of the lawn. In fact, there was another thing which didn't happen through the Spring and Summer, our walk around the three mile loop of the Stromness Loons. It's weird, we'd both been keenly looking forward to see what birds would breed in the wet pasture of the Loons, but Life just seemed to get in the way. One afternoon last week, we did finally have a wander around the loop, six months on from the last time, although of course the breeding season is well and truly over for 2024. Passing the poet's house, we noticed a riot of colour at one side of their garden, then noticed said poet mowing his lawn and remarked upon the profusion of gorgeous blooms. It turns out that he had begun to dig a pond, failed to get much further,

Gazing up into the night sky is quite a good way to ground oneself, if that's not too contradictory a statement. Letting ones eyes become accustomed to the darkness, picking out some of the more familiar celestial bodies  like the Moon, a few of the observable planets, particular stars and, with a bit of eye straining, the odd galaxy, well, i t all helps to give a sense of being a very small cog in a huge universal machine. This contraption could be, I suppose, a pocket watch, but I don't have much time for that theory. Image courtesy of Wallpapers.com And we mustn't forget atmospheric phenomena like the Northern or Southern Lights (Aurora borealis or australis), meteor showers and noctilucent clouds. All wonderful life-affirming experiences, as long as one is not a slightly inquisitive dinosaur. However, all these things require a clear sky, which in my part of the world is not a given. So much not a given, in fact, that I have turned off the aurora alerts on my phone. And

A recent repair job took me to the island of North Ronaldsay, a fifteen minute flight from the Orkney mainland aboard a small eight-seater plane. For our landing in North Ronaldsay, there was a bit of a crosswind, but nothing too severe or requiring the pilot to hold the aircraft at right angles to our direction of travel as he approached the runway. Once the repair, at the north end of the island, was successfully completed, there were a few hours to wile away before the return journey, so wildlife-watching mode was engaged. We bumped into one of the staff from the Bird Observatory and he suggested trying a sea-watch for Sooty and Manx Shearwaters, and pointed in the direction of the Old Beacon on Dennis Head as a good vantage point.  En route to the Beacon, we scored a bonus Hen Harrier hunting over the small fields The Old Beacon Tucked down out of the wind, on the shore below the Beacon, binoculars were steadied and trained on a patch of sea about halfway to the horizon. It took a