Natural highs and lows

It's rather a blustery day, with driving rain, not ideal for working outside with power tools. I rescheduled the day's visits, returned home and settled down to some admin tasks. The Winter thrushes are still moving through, still mainly Redwings, and one eventually deigned to hop about our garden. After lunch, Megan counted at least 150 in the field across the track, with more flocks arriving all the time. As Storm Boelo is bringing 70+mph winds on Sunday, we took the opportunity, during a break in the showers, to move our garden furniture into the garage. Hopefully the garage will be ok! Other storms are available for folk farther south. So the weekend will likely be spent indoors, keeping cosy and warm, probably with my nose in a book and fortified by a conveyor belt of tea mugs. The to-be-read pile is simmering nicely. Unsurprisingly, it's heavy on natural history. The George Monbiot book is my unfinished holiday reading, having sat in the pile for years. I don't kn...

For a couple of weeks now, thrushes have been arriving in the UK from their Scandinavian breeding grounds, hoping for better weather here during the Winter. Birders in Orkney have been studiously counting flock sizes, which have occasionally been in the thousands, but this mainly happens on the east side of the archipelago rather than on the west where we live. However, today we noticed the first few Redwings of the Autumn in the field over the track, and a couple of different Blackbirds in the garden. Apples were immediately deployed, halved and deposited in plain sight, just a short glide from our neighbour's trees.  By lunchtime, it was only the Blackbirds which were confident (or hungry) enough to hop about the front garden. My understanding is that the all-dark individuals are from Scandinavia The resident Blackbird The flocks continued to arrive though, now with a few Fieldfares among them, but no sign of any Song Thrushes yet, or the Holy Grail of Thrushdom, a Ring Ouzel. Re...

[Searches through the "Pictures" folder on my computer...] Hmm, not a single photo since my last blogpost nearly two weeks ago.  September has been much busier than the previous two months, which is good news from the point of view of keeping Mocha in Dreamies, Megan in Shiraz and a very old Volvo in diesel. Although maybe less so from a natural history perspective. [Considers that thought...] However, if I look back through my diary, I'm sure I could probably unearth some precious jewels from the nuts and bolts of a working life. Oddly, the simple act of driving to and fro between home and wherever I am working that day does generate more raptor sightings than if I had to choose a particular location to spot a bird of prey. Most of the Hen Harriers I see are from behind the wheel, as I pootle along the archipelago's roads. Other drive-by raptors include Sparrowhawk, Kestrel and Buzzard, as the birds hunt along verges and in roadside fields. Whilst actually at work, ...

In the immediate aftermath of Storm Amy, I took a few photos of the large purple-flowered geraniums in the rockery. Despite being on the sheltered side of the house for the 24+ hours of 80mph gusts, they had been buffeted by the preliminary south-easterlies before the wind went around to the west for the rest of the performance. I think the vegetation was then caught in a pincer movement as the gusts swirled left and right around the property. I did manage to find one petal which had avoided being swept away to line the kerbs of Stavanger in Norway.   Yesterday, with the winds still gusting in the forties, I took a few more photos to document the garden during this briefest of Autumns. Interestingly, many plants which had been almost completely wind burnt, had the odd flower which appeared totally unscathed. On our southern boundary with a neighbour, the Rowan tree was devoid of leaves and berries, so the winter thrushes are going to be disappointed. Indeed, whilst wandering around...

Here we are on a Friday afternoon, enjoying the fifth consecutive day of sunshine in a row. Yes, I'm still in Orkney. Let's pretend there's not a bitter easterly breeze, eh? It has been so sunny and dry and [sighs] breezy, that we have run out of things to launder: bedding; towels; and so much clothing we can actually see the bottom of the laundry basket. Unprecedented times, I tell you. Monday saw work begin on the new pond location (a subject for a future blogpost). Tuesday, a second day of sunshine, and the insects were beginning to believe in Spring! Several White-legged Snake Millipedes put in an appearance and the first hoverfly of the year was spotted, possibly Eristalis pertinax . At lunchtime, we headed out to Yesnaby on the west coast to set up a transect to monitor Plantain Leaf Beetles for the Species on the Edge Project. It was so peachy, we did two! A Yellow Dung Fly joined me for lunch, which doesn't say much about my sandwiches We saw about 40 beetles an...

Severe gales and driving rain are not an unusual occurrence in Orkney, but three days of the same weather, any type of weather, very much is. So Storm Babet (or normal meteorological conditions for October) is actually a bit different - not in intensity or maximum speed, but in sheer staying power. Coming out of the east, she is hitting the front of the house full on, and we are experiencing a whole new raft of unnerving noises, bumps and rattles as we figure out just what Burnbank sounds like in a gale. We have lost at least one roof tile, but I won't be going up a ladder to investigate until wind speeds drop significantly. Living at the top of a hill, thankfully, we're relatively unlikely to experience the flooding which is causing so many problems elsewhere. Weather from the east always excites the birding fraternity, as migrating species can be blown across the North Sea to make landfall in Orkney. Birds which are rarely seen here are suddenly there in front of you, and a f...

Balmy Autumnal days are a rarity in Orkney, so yesterday was an afternoon to savour. After several days of high winds and heavy showers, I spent the morning sorting out a satellite dish problem and installing an aerial, in glorious sunshine and with barely a breeze. I had anticipated that the job might take longer, so was pleasantly surprised to be home for lunch, which we ate outside, listening to the new soundscape. Yes, it seemed there had been a changing of the guard during the wet weekend. Gone were the Swallows and House Martins (hopefully headed for warmer climes in the southern hemisphere), and newly-arrived from Scandinavia were flocks of Redwing and Fieldfare, respectively tseep -ing and chack -ing their presence as they descended on Rowan and Whitebeam trees laden with berries. Half a dozen Skylarks burbled overhead, after scouting out a nearby stubble field, their gentle contact calls in great contrast to the extravagant ascending songs of Spring and Summer. I do like to he...

Between Christmas and New Year, whilst all was white and wintry, the field over the road was a-throng with Fieldfares, Blackbirds, and Redwings foraging for food. Our aged cats, one more housebound than the other, were very intrigued and vicariously re-living their youth through the window. Into the New Year, a walk in the neighbourhood took us near to a local rookery just as the Rooks were going through their pre-roost shenanigans. [I am fairly sure that in places with more trees than Orkney, the Winter roost site and the Spring breeding site are in different woods. Here they do not have that luxury!] There were many corvids thronging in the air, but I have chosen this particular image as it contains four and twenty black birds. The reason being the rhyme. Another day, another local walk. This view is from the low cliffs and northern shores of Scapa Flow, looking across to the hills of Hoy (Ward Hill and Cuilags) and their dusting of snow. On the same walk, a detour through Gyre Wood,...

It has been a week of highs and lows, has it ever. On Monday, my younger daughter gave birth to a bonnie wee baby boy, instantly promoting me to the status of grandad. The Winter thrushes are still very much in evidence, the field over the road constantly thronging with Redwings and Fieldfares. Redwing Fieldfare It is one of those universal laws of nature, brought to us through the medium of astrophysics, that if a photograph of the mid-winter sunrise is required, it is guaranteed to be cloudy. The same day I had a bit of a change of scene, finding myself not climbing up a ladder or crawling through a loft as usual, but working aboard the local authority's newest tug. As it's Christmas, I guess I should've launched into a rousing chorus of Posh! a la Grandpa Potts from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Yesterday, the male Sparrowhawk was back. Because we both had places to be, we weren't able to identify the victim straight away. However, once home again, I had a look at the fea...