Wildlife and landscapes

The other morning I arose early to try to bag a nice sunrise photograph. What I had in mind was to catch the sun just as it rose above the Isle of Arran, which lies to the east of us. To start the project I put on generous layers of warm clothing then left the house in the cold half-light of the morning. Passing the village bakery at this time the nostrils are assaulted with one of the most enticing smells known to man, fresh bread straight from the oven, but I walked on by and turned up the lane to the golf course, immediately regretting not wearing wellington boots as rainwater squirted up from each step I took across the sodden grass. It was a fine morning but before I could get into a good position overlooking Kilbrannan Sound a dark cloud had raced overhead to spoil the sunrise. The photographic results were hardly worth the effort but in one of the shots I managed to capture Airds Castle, or what little remains of it, in the foreground. [Sadly this picture has since been lost so you will just have to take my word for it.]

As I studied this from my viewpoint on the edge of the rain-drenched golf course I tried to imagine the role this place had played in this landscape. A river of ice had once scraped out the 100 metre deep chasm lying before me and as the glacier receded there would have been a terrific ice cliff here at which the waves nibbled away until eventually every drop had floated away. The sea level would then have been higher than today (there is a line of old cliffs all around the area as evidence of this) but over time this changed, the land itself rising higher to form a new shoreline. Then at some point humans began to settle here, one of whom spotted the craggy outcrop overlooking the water and saw it as a defensible position, from what, nobody knows. After the immensely powerful natural forces that had shaped everything around me, man’s impact here seems very small.

Back home again and the list of different creatures entering our back garden continues to rise. Two rabbits come through from the back now to nibble at some of the more succulent grasses, generally keeping pace with any winter growth, although it has to be said they they seem to prefer next door’s slightly longer herbage to our sodden greenery.

Then a pheasant dropped by and stood at the fence, gazing longingly at the longer grass next door but not quite being able to work out how to get there.

Most interesting is this specimen, strangely reminiscent of Kate, who stacked a trailer-load of wood into a neat pile next to our coal bunker. Memories came flooding back of our winter in the mountains of northern Italy two years ago when we survived on donations of olive wood for the fire and filled our glasses with wine in cartons from the local Lidl supermarket. The smell of the freshly split logs now invades us as we step outside but we must wait many months before we can reap the benefit of the heat energy stored here. Unlike the olive wood, these spruce logs are full of sap and need to dry out for many months before we can burn them.

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We are delighted to learn that our youngest son Ben, having just returned from a musical trip to New York, is at last achieving some success and recognition in the world of music, such that we are beginning to lose count of the number of bands he now plays with. Over the next few months almost anyone living in Britain will have an opportunity to see and hear one of them, The Albion Band, in concert, as they are on a huge nationwide tour. We’ll be off to Edinburgh in March to see them.

Mooring soon

After many years in the planning, things are finally taking shape for visitor moorings to be laid outside Carradale Harbour, making it a place where yachties like us can moor up for the night during the sailing season.

My involvement in this has been to use Cirrus’ chartplotter to generate some latitude and longitude positions so that the required permissions can be obtained. In this photo, imagine a line of yachts just right of centre, quite close to the shore, lying between 55° 35.627’N, 5° 27.904’W and 55° 35.664’N, 5° 27.963’W and you get the picture. Having visitor moorings in place will put the village on a par with many other small communities in the Clyde and indeed all over the Western Isles. It is because there are so many places to stop that makes this area so attractive to sailors and word will soon get around that Carradale has moorings, sheltered from the westerly winds, close to the shore so that yachties can pop ashore for a drink or a meal. We can expect a steady stream of yellow-welly-clad visitors to Carradale this summer.

Given some dry weather Cirrus’ lower parts will soon start to get some attention. I have promised her that the many layers of antifouling paint will be scraped off this winter and made a brief start at this job last week. But then decorating inside the house once again took over our lives after Kate disappeared upstairs and began stripping the sad-looking wood-chip paper from the bedroom ceiling, not a job for the faint-hearted. In the end I noticed what she had achieved and had no choice but to join in and apply some layers of fresh paint but then when my back was turned again she had started stripping the walls too. So we decided finally that a complete room makeover was the only option left and each evening now we admire the paint splatters in each other’s hair and are reminded of our house makeover in Yeovil last winter.

On a day off we drag ourselves to the top of Deer Hill, our favourite jaunt from the house, to admire the winter views and smell the winter smells. It is a rare day of almost calm. The sea is smooth with tinted ripples dappling its surface although the air is cool, threatening frost.

Hogmanay

A sparrowhawk appears suddenly in our back garden, a sneak attack around our bird feeders which are coveted by its prey, plump chaffinches, blue/great/coal tits and tasty looking blackbirds. The hawk’s strategy is to fly low and fast over the rooftop or around the side of the house so that its approach is hidden… until the very last moment.

Perhaps the washing lines strung across the garden from three poles are hunting obstacles, but given this bird’s manoeuvrability in flight they are clearly not a deterrent. Seeing such an animal in our tiny garden and so close to the house, seems amazing and we can hardly contain our excitement. I am standing by the rear window talking on the phone, puzzling the caller with my yelp of delight then my silence as I battle with competing demands – should I try to get a photo or summon Kate so she too can see – then the hawk is gone, away to try his luck elsewhere. Several days later I am again on the phone when I witness a successful attack and the hawk flies off with a dunnock taken from the ground beneath our kitchen window.

Just before Christmas we took a wild walk through forest tracks to the north of Carradale, past Christmas trees decorated with long streamers of dead grass blown there by the wind, when a golden eagle swooped low over our heads, its white markings above and below the broad wings identifying it as a juvenile, something we would never have guessed from its size alone. We both stood awestruck as it disappeared behind some trees, our heads rotating wildly in case it should reappear, but our presence no doubt alerted any nearby prey and the first glimpse was all we got.

The new year has arrived and another visitor, less welcome than the flying raptors, has come to our notice. Late in the evening we hear scuffling noises in the ‘coombe’, a word used here to describe the space inside the house but outside our bedroom walls where the roof slope overhangs the ground floor. This requires investigation so in the morning I don protective boiler suit and dust mask then crawl along the rafters to the spot where we think the noise emanates. There is nothing to see, of course, other than some shredded carpet underlay (our mistake in storing it there) and a few small parcels that DNA analysis might identify as animal droppings. Even without this slim evidence it seems very likely that a wee beastie would want to seek the warmth of our home for shelter and since it would be impossible to make the house completely secure from all species of small mammal, we cease to worry and get on with our lives.

We soon learn that the first days of a new year are an important time here in Scotland. This is a time for visiting friends and neighbours and not a time when we can expect to be alone for long. Suddenly our lives have evolved into a social whirl as invitations pour in and our house in turn fills with visitors.

We first met David, Liz and their charming daughter, Sophia, when Cirrus Cat was berthed in Cornwall in 2010 so we were delighted to have them arrive unexpectedly for a visit. Sophia has now grown from a delightful baby into an energetic and indefatigable three-year old to whom every experience is new and exciting. Bedtime stories read by friendly older people, sleeping in a strange bed for one night then waking up in morning semi-darkness in a house where the lights won’t turn on and a kettle of water is being heated on the coal stove because the storm outside has brought another power cut, all this may be a far cry from her normal everyday existence but she is endlessly adaptable and seems to take it in her stride.

The early morning is particularly wild, wind gusts shrieking around the house, rain blasting against the windows and the electricity failed just as I had finished in the (electric) shower, rather conveniently so I thought. We apologise to our guests for the absence of promised hot showers as our stove is now the only source of heat, its flat top only enabling Kate to cook porridge for breakfast and to boil water for hot drinks. By the time our guests leave us there is still no power and unlike the brief 4-hour power failure in last week’s storm, this one lasts all day and through the following night. In the morning we still have no electricity but we know that many of our neighbours in the village will be worse off than us as they rely totally on it for heating and cooking. Reduced to a more primitive lifestyle than we usually enjoy we begin to consider what lies before us. The telephone is silent, mobile phone signals are absent and we find ourselves more out of touch with the world than if we were sailing offshore on Cirrus. There is no television nor radio, no hot water other than what we can heat by the kettleful and as darkness descends on Carradale for a second night, no streetlights illuminate the world outside. Although the storm has abated, every so often there is a squall which brings wind and a shower of rain or hail but in between these the sky is clear and there are stars and a sliver of moon in the sky, our only source of light. It is the inability to communicate that means most to us and our thoughts become ever more fanciful. What if civilisation has collapsed and world order broken down? How would we know? Here we are isolated from the world without any way of finding out what is happening ‘out there’. Whilst we may be able to keep ourselves warm, for the moment, our food supply is limited, more limited still once the freezer thaws out and food stored in it goes bad. Our survival might soon depend upon our ability to hunt and kill animals or to gather shellfish from the shore. Although there is nothing remotely edible visible from our windows, we know there are deer in the forest. But how does one bring down a deer with only a hand axe and a screwdriver as weapons?

The next morning it is stormy and wet again so, still without electricity, we go foraging for food, in the car, to the shops in Campbeltown. The blackout in Carradale is localised, it seems. In Campbeltown there is electricity, lights, warmth in the shops and smiling faces. Civilisation as we know it still exists; world order is intact.