The North wind doth blow

St Abbs Head from Earnsheugh

The snowdrops and aconites are out in the corners of the garden, the blackbirds are poking about under the hedges, inspecting twigs for length and strength, the collared doves are cosying up to each other and the jackdaws are checking every unused chimney pot for nest sites. If Spring has not yet sprung, she has started her run-up.
The Burns season of ritualistic haggis-bashing and tam-o’-shantering is drawing to its close when most of the populace will forget all about poems in eighteenth century Scots, indeed about poetry in general, until next year.

Burn’s night may be past but “Janwar’s cauld blast” that hanselled in his birth and his recent birthday, is still very much present as the raw, northerly winds keep threatening with little flurries, to bring back the snow.
The winds have whipped up the white horses on the sea and kept the sea birds in low profile though the garden birds have been present in large numbers due in no small part to LotH’s generous array of feeding stations. The RSPB garden bird count over one hour may have been artificially boosted by the seeds and fat-balls on offer.

The wind may have had an unexpected benefit. A local farmer, whose farm extends to the cliff edge, reported seeing a big buzzard-like bird with a wing span “as wide as a barn door”. He was sure it was a sea eagle, the erne or earn, as it used to be called. Several eagles have been released in Fife as part of ESSE, the East Scotland Sea Eagle Project, and the Fife coast is clearly visible from the cliff tops. With a tail wind from the north, one of the birds could easily make it to our shore.

http://www.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/projects/eastscotlandeagles/index.asp

It would be marvellous if they re-colonised this area. I say re-colonised as Muirhead’s Birds of Berwickshire, published in 1889 notes them as “being seen less frequently than before”. Since every account cited mentions where, when and by whom they were shot, it is little surprising that they became less frequently seen.. Our Victorian forefathers really have a lot to answer for!

Muirhead does say that there are several place-names associated with the sea eagles, Earns Rig, Earnscleugh and, for us, Earnsheugh, just along the cliff top from where the bird was seen.
How great would it be if the earns returned to Earnsheugh.



Earnsheugh above the cliffs

One day, we might even see the re-introduction of the “reid-nebbed craw”, the chough, once so common on the cliffs that local children kept them as pets.

A great place for choughs

Aye, as they say, it's an ill wind...and all that.

Curling at the edges

Sweep Sweep!

So, the Grand Match didn’t happen. The once-in-a-lifetime event in the curler’s almanac, the alfresco bonspiel, the traditional North versus South contest on the Lake of Mentieth for hundreds of enthusiasts of the roaring game, never got off the ground or on to the ice, to be precise. By the time the RCCC had consulted with the various services and public bodies, got all the ducks lined up, the thaw had set in, the ice was unplayable and the ducks were back on the lake.

It has become extremely difficult to organise any event without running foul of some obstructive rule or regulation. Litigation has made the term “accident” redundant. Someone is always to blame or so we are reminded daily by television adverts. This is all the more ludicrous when quantum physics tells that the universe itself is based on probability not certainty. Chance is what keeps the whole business going. The universe, it seems, keeps all its options open all the time. Nothing is fixed until we look at it and it ceases to be fixed as soon as we stop looking. At the very building blocks of matter, you can never know for certain where anything is, only the probability.

The infinite number of possibilities provided convenient escape mechanisms for Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It all comes down to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The more we know about one variable, the less we can know of the other. It is a fundamental law of the universe.

The Curling Club bonspiel did go ahead, thanks to the indefatigable efforts of George the blacksmith. Members were summoned, guests invited, sustenance arranged and rinks drawn, with the result of a splendid evening of sport and bonhomie.

Mind you, some of the curling did demonstrate the truth of The Principle of Uncertainty.
Simply put, the principle states that it is impossible to know both the position and the velocity of an object at the same time. Oh, how true of the curling stone. No wonder it is known as the roaring game, the noise made by the skips shouting their sweepers on and off - “Sweep sweep, harder harder, Leave it, Up Up , Oh no! Sweep sweep !” as they tried to judge the speed and the ultimate destination of a stone, would certainly justify the epithet and despite all the noise they were, mostly, no nearer solving the problem.

Perhaps the boys and girls at the Large Hadron Collider should take up curling. It certainly makes one philosophical about the fact that despite your best efforts, projected particles don't go where they should, unexpected results occur, disappointments are many and the next end is always going to be better.

Uncertainty rules!

S'now fun anymore

The village

The snow plough has blocked us in having pushed enough of the white stuff up on to the sides of the road to barricade the entrance to the drive. Even the 4WD can’t get through it so it will be shovels out once it stops falling out of the sky. No point in starting it now while the flakes just keep coming down.

The garden is under a couple of feet and the birds couldn’t get at the feeders so a quick clearance job was needed for our daily diners to get to the seeds and peanuts.

Among the finches, tits, sparrows, dunnocks and robin, all squabbling and pecking furiously at the seeds, LotH spotted an oddity. A brambling had joined the chaffinches to grab some much needed sustenance. The poor deluded soul had flown over from northern Europe to escape the harsh weather and landed here in the worst winter for decades.
“The best laid schemes….etc”

Jackdaws have taken to coming to the fat ball feeder, clinging clumsily to the cage, wings flapping, as they peck at the suet. A yellowhammer, never one to voluntarily approach human habitation, has been warily inspecting the offerings. Times must be hard in the bird world

The geese have been flying up the coast in long straggly skeins, presumably looking for clearer feeding grounds.

Next day, two tracks were dug to get the Freelander out onto the road and a trip for essentials was possible. The main road from the village is “passable with care” mostly by 4WD’s but the other roads are only open courtesy of the local farmers coming in on their tractors to collect the “Scotsman” and leaving a couple of channels. Alright for pedestrians but too wide apart to be of much use to conventional vehicles.

Everyone seems cheery and the community spirit had come to the fore. The local shop has voluntarily rationed milk, a carer walked three miles to, and three miles back to visit her terminally ill patient, farmers have collected stranded workers with tractors, paths to coal bunkers have been dug for the elderly and cars given a helpful push on wheel-spinning slopes.
It’s all very picturesque and seasonal but it’s now getting to be a bit of a bore, like one of those snow scene ornaments that were popular years ago, after a couple of shakes, the novelty palled.
There is only so much winter wonderland one can take.

Blue moons and cold dips

The year has reached its chilly end. Hogmanay gave us the rarity of a blue moon and it is even rarer still for it to fall on the last day of the year
There are usually twelve full moons in a year and each has its name from The Moon After Yule in January, to the Wolf Moon, Lenten Moon, and so on to the Harvest Moon, Hunter’s Moon and The Moon Before Yule. If the “extra” full moon at the end of the year was called the Moon after Yule which, strictly speaking, it is, it would knock all the other names out of place, so it has become the “blue” moon.
As we came scrunching back over the frozen snow after bringing in the New Year, the clouds parted obligingly for us to catch a brief glimpse of the silver disc and , yes, it did look to have a hint of blue about it. It won’t happen again until 2028, so that might have been our only chance. Who knows?

The first day of 2010 was the day for the annual dip in the North Sea. Starting as a dare about twenty odd years ago, the custom has continued and grown over time attracting new adherents, guests, and some of the offspring of the earliest participants carrying on in the family tradition. At least one of the pioneers was still braving the briny.



Being an original, I felt that I ought to still to be taking the plunge but had the excuse of convalescence to avoid the heart-stopping dive in to the sea.
Accompanied by a piper, and surrounded by well wishers and a few astonished visitors, the latest recruits, including two Frenchmen upholding the honour of la patrie, made that adrenalin-charged dash down the beach and into the waves..
It was heartening to see that sheer lunacy still prevails and our proud tradition of innate idiocy is being carried on by the next generation.





Who says that folk can’t make their own entertainment anymore?