Natural highs and lows

When we attended the Valtos gig in Edinburgh in September, Megan was full of cold and couldn't really enjoy the experience. So a pre-Christmas jaunt was organised to see the band again, this time in Inverness at a new venue An Seomar (The Room). Due to my advancing years, I qualify for free bus travel, so with the addition of a couple of ferry vouchers, we were able to make the journey on public transport at a much-reduced cost. All credit to the Scottish Government for these initiatives. Rather than awake at some ungodly hour to catch the 06.30 sailing from Stromness, we opted to make use of the B+B facility on the boat, checking in at 21.30 the night before sailing. This allowed for a few leisurely glasses of wine and nibbles in the Magnus Lounge before retiring to our cabin for the night.  Following breakfast and a smooth crossing of the Pentland Firth, we had a short wait at the terminal in Scrabster until our bus arrived for the journey to Inverness. Scrabster sunrise twixt bo...

It was a very serendipitous moment. A morning's work was cancelled when I arrived on site to find no-one around and the building securely locked. Several phone calls later, with the work re-arranged for another day, I headed home much earlier than expected. As I wandered into the lounge, ruminating about how I was going to plan the rest of the day, I happened to glance out of the window into the garden. A bird flew up from beneath the seed feeder and disappeared into an Alder tree. I didn't know what it was, but I did know that it was a species I hadn't ever seen before. Without taking my eyes off the spot where the bird had vanished, I called for reinforcements, preferably armed with binoculars. By the time another set of eyes was trained on the Alder tree, I could breathe out and upgrade my "I don't know what" to an "I have an inkling." My garbled description was along the lines of bigger than a House Sparrow, smaller than a Blackbird, a blur of br...

Sunday promised to be unremittingly dreich, so a Saturday leg stretch was undertaken in (mostly) drier conditions. Leaving Houton, the dykes were pinpricked with little bursts of colour as Lesser Celandines lit up the road verges.   Past Houton Head, the coastline is dotted with the ruins of old military defences. I wondered whether these rusting steel cables were similarly naval in origin... But later recourse to an 1882 map suggested that they were connected to the junction of the Land and Submarine Telegraph. Lunch was taken out of the wind in a ruined building by the shore. Along Petertown Road, a small wood revealed the catkins of some Alder trees. I think the long thin ones are this year's male catkins, whilst the round brown ones are last year's female catkins. After an ascent to the trig point on Midland Hill, the downhill route went by the ruined croft of Quarryhouse. Here, my attention was drawn to a shallow pool (which only looked like it was there due to recent rain...