Birdsong

 The rigs run down to the cliff edge

Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending was recently voted the most popular piece of classical music in the country.    It was chosen as one of the pieces played at the commemoration of the 9/11 tragedy so its appeal extends far beyond our shores.

Vaughan Williams himself did not, apparently, regard it as one of his greatest works.

Its popularity maybe partly due to the image of this tiny bird rising into the blue, wings beating frantically while it pours out its song.  The human equivalent might be to sprint a hundred metres in ten seconds while singing “Che gelida manina" at full register.

The skylarks were in good voice as I skirted the long rigs that run down to the tops of the cliffs along our local coastline but they were in competition with another songster perched inconspicuously atop a stunted hawthorn.   A song that gives rise to that old Scots expression of joy – “singing like lintie” – it was a linnet.  Once so numerous, that our Victorian forefathers, perpetrators of so much wildlife crime, kept them as cage-birds, they are now on the “Red” list of endangered breeds.

 Coastline walk

Birdsong has and probably will always be an inspiration for composers.  The cuckoo features famously in Beethoven, Britten, Mahler and Mozart. The nightingale makes several appearances and there have been parts for robins, wagtails and even siskins.  Vivaldi had his “Goldfinch ” concerto but I can’t find a reference to the linnet.  There must be one somewhere.

Probably the most famous bird in music is the little bird, Peter’s friend in Peter and the Wolf  though I don’t think Prokofiev said what sort of bird it was.  I think it sounds like a wren but I am definitely no musician.

A  recent trip to the Hebrides was enlivened by the daily calling of the gowk whose name, to Anglophones, embodies its call…the cuckoo, and by that sound, now so rare on the mainland, that of the corn crake.

The corn crake’s onomatopoeic Latin name, crex crex, like a thumbnail running down a comb, exactly describes the call that seems to come from about six different birds or from six different locations in the reeds.  No wonder it has a reputation as a ventriloquist.

Watching people going about, walking, jogging, cycling, even waiting at bus stops, with their ears plugged into their i-pods, I fear that a generation will never know the song of a blackbird or the “wise thrush; he sings each song twice over” let alone the linnet or the skylark.

Trees

A visit to Perthshire to the big hills and big trees made a pleasant break from the sodden byways of the Scottish Borders.

The Falls

The Birks

The Birks of Aberfeldy, immortalised in verse by Burns, provided a pleasant evening stroll.  The air was charged with negative ions from the cascading Falls of Moness, its purity vouched for by the lichens clinging to every ancient tree.   Wood anemones and red squirrels added to the enjoyment.

Being among such splendid trees, there had to be a visit to the Fortingall yew, reputed to be up to five thousand years old.   For years it suffered depredation by souvenir hunters and local children and is now protected in a walled enclosure.  There is a local legend that Pontius Pilate was born here as the offspring of a Roman ambassador and a Pictish woman but it seems a highly unlikely tale.

The Yew

 If its age is a great as recorded, the yew has stood from a time before the Neolithic settlers raised the stone circles that still abound in the surrounding fields.  It was once circled by wolf and bear.  Wild boar would have rooted about in its shade.

It’s a thought.   A living organism that goes on and on, regardless of human existence, oblivious to us except when we come and cut chunks from it or set fire to it as has happened to the yew.   Five thousand years,  hmmm!

I have this little yew in a pot.  I found it growing under one of the apple trees.  It was probably seeded by a thrush having dined on the berries of a mature specimen that grows by the nearby burn.  Thrushes seem to be only birds that eat yew berries - and laburnum seeds - without any harm coming to them.  

  Now, if I can just grow it up a bit, then find a safe spot to plant it out …….and in  7012…..will there be any one here to see it?

On the subject of trees, I’ve been keeping an eye on the oak and the ash coming into leaf.

Oak before the ash, in for a splash

Ash before the oak, in for a soak

At the moment they seem to be neck and neck but I have a feeling the ash is going to draw away in the leafy stakes and we are in for a wet summer.    Experts say it is temperature that controls the sequence with cooler weather favouring the ash and doesn’t predict rainfall.  I hope they are right

Spring Prologue

Whanne that Aprille with his shoures sote

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote

Not much has changed since Chaucer’s day; April still brings the rain though whether it will be enough to pierce the current drought is debatable.  In the  fourteenth century, it was more about the crops failing than not being able to wash the car at the week-end.

A break in the downpour allowed a visit to Pease Dean, a deep ravine that defeated invading armies for centuries until it was crossed in 1786 by what was, in the eighteenth century, the highest bridge in Europe.   It still stands as a tribute to its builders carrying massive articulated lorries, unforeseen in the time of drays and coaches.

The dean is home to a huge variety of  woodland plants including the  bluebell, the English variety, with its coy, drooping  flower, said to hang thus to protect the pollen from the rain, unlike it  more upright Spanish cousin who didn’t need to develop this trait.

Unfortunately, the Spaniard is so widespread that hybrids are common and neither has the fragrance of the native species.  The bluebell like wood sorrel and ransomes or wild garlic is an indicator species showing the age of a wood.

 The rare Northern brown Argus butterfly can be found here but it is too early yet to see them so I settled for a commoner but still beautiful Peacock

And smalle fowles maken melodye

The dean was full of the song of warblers and tits as well as the harsh cackle of magpies and the omnipresent coo-cooing of wood pigeons. Trying to get a shot of a dipper, I made the mistake of crossing the burn by way of some stones.  Wet and slippery with the rains, they proved treacherous underfoot and I ended up in the burn.   As I returned home soaked through, LotH pointed out that it is more than half a century since I had licence to play in burns and I must learn, even at this late stage, to act my age and not my shoe size.

The terns are back in the bay, having completed their epic journey to Antarctica and back.   I watched them fishing like children ducking for apples.  Graceful and fast they are the “swallows of the sea”    Their terrestrial counterparts, the swallows, should be appearing within the next week.   Year upon year,theycome winging in, usually within twenty four hours of the last arrival date.   
They amaze me.   I can never take their sight for granted. 

 I hope the weather improves for them.

Post script 
The first swallow has indeed arrived and the cuckoo flowers have bloomed ...and still...
... the rain it raineth every day
... as in the fourteenth, so in the sixteenth and the twenty first centuries
... the uncertain glory of an April day

Doing the rounds

A couple of days ago, I met Toad making his way up the garden path. Rescued from a dustbin a few years back, he has since lived in the garden and only appears in the spring when he seems to want to migrate somewhere. To avoid him getting flattened of the road, a fate common to many of his kind, I took him to a neighbouring pond to see if that would satisfy his wanderlust.

Today, I came across one of his erstwhile companions, Mole, busy snuffling about in the grass beside a local walk presumably looking to set up home

.

Unfortunately, the third member of the trio is now not so common. Ratty, the water vole, is on the endangered list. I have caught the occasional glimpse by the burn but the only time I ever got close was to a corpse, neatly dissected by, perhaps, a heron. It looked like a big hamster.

Odd how things get the wrong name, Ratty wasn’t a rat; hedge sparrows aren’t sparrows and the dames violets, that are coming into flower, aren’t violets. They may not even be violet coloured, at least the ones by the beach path weren’t. They were white but they smell like violets…or, at least their scent is what people think violets smell like …like those little purple sweets that you used to get…cachous, I think they were called.

I went for a stroll to a little water meadow surrounded by whins with their own, wonderful coconut scent to see if I could find any traces of the trio’s big chum, Badger, but the sett seem to be deserted, however, another older one, close to the village seems to be getting a remake… or a fox has taken it over. Certainly, there seems to be active digging going on.

The whirligig beetles on the pond in the meadow were spinning round in shiny arabesques. Why? I wondered, but then much of what we do seems, and probably is, as pointless and time-consuming as the beetles’ endless circling. Their activities must confer some advantage, though, making it more difficult for predators, perhaps, for Nature and evolution do not allow pointless expenditure of energy. Only humans are permitted that self indulgence as anyone who has followed Scotland at rugby for the past few seasons will know.

Changing Attitudes

One of my favourite spots is a mysterious ruin perched high above the North Sea. Once a place of intrigue and secrecy, it is now the haunt of the peregrine and the kittiwake. Many years ago, I watched puffins from its vantage point but they too have gone.

On the approach road, I saw a shifting huddle of grey shapes beside a wee loch

Pink footed geese

Pink-footed geese, resting on their northerly migration, they were wary of my presence and ready to take to flight at a close approach. Scores of them, with others flying in to join the flock, pecked and grazed the rough pasture.

The path to the castle is steep and the entrance is not for those with vertigo but, once across the rocky bridge, it is a pleasant place to relax in the sunshine and keep an eye on the coastal shipping.

Stretched out on the grass, I heard a low crooning sound over the lap and splash of the sea. Edging to the remains of the ramparts, I saw the source of the sounds, a small colony of grey seals and pups on the rocky shore hundreds of feet below. Safe, below two hundred feet of sheer cliff and guarded from the sea by boulders and reefs, they were sleeping and resting and singing to each other in a gentle lowing.

Once seen, unreasonably, as a pest by fishermen for competing for what was then a plentiful resource, they are now, in leaner times, seen as an asset, when fishing has been replaced by eco-tourism and visitors will pay to catch a glimpse the local fauna in its natural habitat.

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamtur in illis

Bridging the gap

Cliff-top view

There has been a gap in my ancestry, indeed, in everyone’s, of which I’ve been totally unaware. Fortunately, it’s now being filled and right on my doorstep.

It seems that 360 to 345 million years ago some of our ancestors, those that survived one the extinction events that seem to occur from time to time, dragged themselves out of the sea and took up residence on land but nobody had much idea about them as there was a gap in the fossil record, the so-called Romer’s gap. I only know this from the local newspaper because it appears that the gap has been filled by fossils found right here in the cliffs and river beds. A paleontological breakthrough.

Descent

There was nothing for it but to go and have a look for myself. Beautiful day, beautiful views and a charming little fishing village but after scrambling precariously about on the shale slopes then almost getting marooned by the incoming tide, I drew a blank. A couple of rocks that looked like sea plant fossils …maybe… but nothing exciting, but then I’m not an expert and even they haven’t been able to find any until recently, hence the “gap”.

Fossils?

Coming home was more productive. Skeins of geese were honking their way north along the coast, a flock of goldeneye, several females with a male in attendance, rested just offshore. Presumably they were heading in the same direction.

Goldeneye

Primrose and celandine on the braes and speedwell in the field edges were opening to the sun.

The local cormorants are getting their white breeding plumage on. They are the masters of air and water but as clumsy on land as those first tetrapods must have been when they first waddled ashore in “gap” years of the Tournasian era.

I must go back and have another look though LotH has reminded me to take my mobile phone…..just in case.

Spring hopes

Sunrise

Despite the hard frosts – minus 7 last night - there is a feeling that spring is just around the corner. The snowdrops and aconites have bloomed in the lea of the hawthorn hedge and two slender yellow crocus blooms have survived the “ Janwar’s cauld blast”

The morning walk for the newspapers is accomplished in near daylight – well, the return leg, at least. Yes, there is definitely a feeling that winter’s grip is slackening.

The local farmers are, thanks to the lack of snow, “weel forrit” with the work, the ploughed fields looking like acres of giant corduroy with their complement of foraging peewits, though, sadly, in nothing like the numbers remembered from childhood. The tups have been at the work as well, the red marks on the ewes’ rumps the evidence of their productivity.

The rights of way and the paths around the village have, at long last been cleared and way-marked. The spur seems to have been the walking festival scheduled for this summer. A visit from daughter and her lurcher meant a new companion on the walks after the departure of NCC, and the environs were duly inspected.

The nest boxes have been cleaned and repaired.

The birds at the feeders seem to be brightening up their plumage, the colours seeming more vibrant than the dowdy duds of winter…….. or am I just hoping.. Well, they do say …hope springs and all that.