Dancing Queen

Linlithgow Loch, created millennia ago when glacial deposits changed the course of the River Avon, has been home to mankind since earliest times as witnessed by the remains of crannogs on the lake.  Now, it lies in the middle of the ancient royal burgh, surrounded by housing and close to the traffic roar of the M9. Despite all this, it abounds with bird life especially water fowl. A stroll round the perimeter in the early morning was accompanied by a chorus of from thrushes, blackbirds, robins and wrens, surely the champions in the size to volume stakes.

Mute swans, coots, moor-hens, mallards, tufted ducks, herring gulls, and the occasional escaped, domestic duck or goose all went about their business –  feeding, fishing, nesting, courting – unaffected by the human activity surrounding them.

Nesting Coot

 It wasn't these that I had come to see.

Great Crested Grebe

 It was the great crested grebes and their elaborate “dance” as they bond into mating pairs. I was not disappointed. They performed on cue.

Bobbing and dipping, separating and coming together, swimming in line and then together, it was a privilege to witness such a rare display in an urban setting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORqblRpH9Eg 

Linlithgow Palace, birthplace of James V and Mary, Queen of Scots overlooks the loch. The young princess must have seen the dance of the great crested grebes from the palace windows.

Married to the Dauphin she spent her early adult life in France and indulged her love of dancing at the French court. It is said that on her return to assume the crown of Scotland, she brought the refined dances in the French style to her native land.

The style of contre-dansant became translated into “country dancing” where the partners face each other and bow and set before separating and joining in a stylised pattern.

I wonder if she thought of the grebes she had watched in childhood as she tried to get the rougher elements of the sixteenth century Scottish nobility to pas de bas or dance a schottische.

Thankfully, the grebes, brought to the brink of extinction by our Victorian forefathers who used their feathers to decorate women's hats, were saved to thrive again beneath Mary's windows and perform their stately dance.

Newcraighall

For anyone visiting Auld Reekie, our capital city, the park-and-ride is a boon. No more fighting the traffic and being either fined or fleeced for parking. 50p and a ten minute train journey and you are into the litter strewn centre of the Athens of the North.

How many shoppers, culture seekers or sports fans have climbed the steps from the car park to Newcraighall station to take the wee shuttle train without noticing the memorial to Bill Douglas, film maker, director writer and actor?

At the top of the station steps

Born in Newcraighall in 1934, Douglas grew up in a world of poverty, emotional deprivation and physical abuse. His escape was the cinema. National Service gave him a way out and he found friendship and the encouragement to make a career out of acting and writing and then film making.

His famous trilogy - My Childhood, My Ain Folk, and My Way Home – is autobiographical and constitutes one of the finest bodies of work made by any film maker anywhere.

Made in the 1970's, with a tiny budget, shot in black and white, and using local people and a few professional actors, he captured the bleak physical and emotional landscapes of the post war mining village and harshness of his childhood.  A world dominated by authority and fear, a world where people struggled to express their feelings where violence and indifference were commonplace yet containing images of tenderness.

Douglas coaxed performances from the ordinary people of Newcraighall and, in particular, from Stephen Archibald and his chum, Hughie Restorick, as Jamie and his half-brother Tommy. 

The boys had been truanting from school when they approached Douglas asking “Can I have a fag, Mister?”. Douglas laughed and, recognising their innate ability, cast them immediately.

Stephen Archibald went on to play the Jamie/ Bill Douglas character in all three films to critical acclaim and became a firm friend to the director.

Sadly, he didn't achieve the escape his mentor had managed. There was no National Service to take him away from his background and he died, aged forty, from the effects of drug abuse and neglect.

He was captured on film expressing his thoughts on how a different generation had been lost to drugs rather than deprivation.

The miners cottages now prettified and neat

Newcraighall is being developed, new build everywhere.

 The railway, a recurring image in the trilogy, still runs past, separating the world of the mining village from the splendour of Newhailes House. The line is electrified now. No more coal and smoke and grime. No more mines. No more miners. 

Newcraighall today

 There are still glimpses of the harsh landscapes of Bill Douglas' childhood but thankfully few. We have come a long way

You don't have to park and ride to experience Bill Douglas genius. His films are available on DVD  and if you do, you'll never climb those steps to Newcraighall station quite so indifferently again.

https://moviemasterclass.wordpress.com/articles-and-reviews/bill-douglas-his-ain-man/

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3616866841

A grey day for the reds

Today was the day for cleaning out the bird boxes. Last year's efforts are consigned to the bin and the residences made ready for the new tenants. Birds will reuse old nest sites, even those of another species but like ourselves prefer a new start. The intricacy and the neatness of these creations always amazes and delights me. Constructions of twigs, moss, feathers, even spider's web are woven into perfect cups and domes. The nest box contents take the shape of the box so it is more difficult to identify the bird responsible. The size of the entrance hole is one discriminating factor.

Contents of a nest box - probably a tit's nest with man-made fibres and what looks like horse hair

The shambolic collection of twigs that passes for a wood pigeons' nest is made up for by their scatter gun approach to breeding. Instead of investing a lot of care and effort in one or possibly two broods, they breed over and over again, reckoning on at least one success out of many. Judging by the flocks of pigeons on the surrounding fields, it seems to work.

Hule Moss

A fruitless visit to Hule Moss, a lochan on a high moor, got me thinking. The overwintering geese, numbering in thousands, and the other birds of passage had left. The summer visitors were yet to arrive so the moor was empty apart from its permanent residents, the most valuable creatures in the United Kingdom – red grouse.

 People will pay thousands to come and blast these feathered targets out of the sky which makes them, pound for pound, worth more than the most expensive bull in any show ring.

There is about as much eating on a pigeon as there is on a grouse, they too are good strong fliers and many a farmer would let those with avicidal tendencies come and shoot as many as they wished for free. It might save a few hen harriers from the gamekeepers. 

The local pheasant shooters have been keeping an eye out for grey squirrels but have been defeated in their attempts to keep the village grey-free. I saw one boldly raiding the bird table of a house near the burn then scampering off into the woods. Our colonies of reds have slowly disappeared over the past decade. At one time, they seemed to be expanding and we thought they were protected by the treeless expanse of the moor separating them from the greys in the neighbouring parish. Alas, they have gone. The pleasure the sight of red Tufty brings is not a quality shared by their American cousins. The red with its ear tufts and delicate features and neat movements is a pleasing animal, the burly grey is not. Perhaps I am guilty of anthropomorphism but I do see the greys as an invading pest with gangster tendencies and the reds as victims.

If we have to have shooting parties then pigeons and grey squirrels should be top of the list of targets. Both move fast and would provide the test of skill the guns say they are looking for -just a thought.

Spring hopes

Despite the biting wind that has a chill factor to freeze the blood, our little strip of coast seems to have maintained its own micro-climate. The forecasts are full of yellow and amber warnings and pictures of blizzards and drifts but we have had nary a flake. The snowdrops, aconites and crocuses are flowering in the lea of the hawthorn hedge, the Christmas rose has been superseded by its Lenten cousin and “Janwar's cauld blast” is past. Are we to escape? There are reports of thunder-snow and, having experienced it (Blog30/11/2010), I am happy for the storms to pass us by.

Hares are congregating in the fields as they start their long mating season. The chasing and “boxing” that they indulge in are, apparently not between rival males but are most likely between jacks and jills as the females test the persistence and stamina of prospective partners!

What triggers the behaviour? How do usually solitary animals know when and where to assemble?

Is it the lengthening day...the earlier sunrise? It surely can't be the temperature that sets their internal clock ticking... not in this freezing wind.

The roe deer are shedding the hodden grey of their winter coats and turning russet. Even the plumage on the garden birds is starting to look brighter. There have been fewer truly wild visitors to the feeders this year....a nuthatch and a couple of long tailed tits.. and then only fleetingly, presumably due to the mild winter. The residents, the tits, the sparrows, the blackies and the robin have had it all to themselves.... including, of course, Geoffrey, the cock pheasant, avoiding the guns like a WWI staff officer, well away from the front.

The surfers at our beach still defy the cold and try to catch a wave. I've tried boogie boarding in the Barbados.. an alliterative experience.. but in the North Sea... in January?

February is here, the month that folk lore says the birds choose their mates. Winter is past no matter what the weather.

And yet....today..bright and sunny... is Candlemas and the old rhyme says -

If Candlemas be dry and bright, winter will have another bite

We shall see

T is for tea and taxes

Looking towards Hawk Ness

The high cliffs along our stretch of coast are a good place to look for peregrines. The inaccessible ledges provide roosting and breeding sites with the rock doves and sea-birds as a continuous food supply.

After a steep climb, you are rewarded with views up and down the coast. The peregrines have been here since before people came to name these places so that the highest point on the cliffs is called Hawk Ness.

I saw no peregrines but watched a lesser black-backed gull harassing a great northern diver. The gull had obviously sussed that the diver couldn't swallow its fishy prey while underwater so was waiting until it surfaced then trying to grab the fish from the diver's bill. The diver responded by diving again and resurfacing somewhere else to gulp down the catch before the gull could paddle over. The gull could see the diver under the waves and was turning to follow its path. An act of piracy worthy of a skua.

Climbing down the grassy slopes, I came across a ruined building that I had always thought was a sheiling built for the salmon fishers netting the fish on their coastal migration, albeit a more elaborate one compared to those further down the coast.

The smugglers' retreat

A new notice informed me that I was wrong. It had been built by a smuggler, one Alexander Robertson who smuggled the then highly taxed, tea into the country presumably landing it on the flat rocky shore line or in the adjacent bay, well out of sight of the coastguards and gaugers. He was so successful that he bought the mortgage of Gunsgreen House, an impressive Adams mansion built in the nearby fishing port by his great rival in the contraband trade, John Nisbet. Gunsgreen is perfectly fitted out for the smuggler with false walls and secret doorways.

Gunsgreen House

  http://gunsgreenhouse.org/the-house/

The tools of the smuggling trade

The waters below the old sheiling now attract surfers and sea-anglers but with a little imagination you can just see the men in their thigh high sea- boots splashing through the shallows or working the winch to bring the cases of tea and the barrels of brandy ashore.

Surfers below the sheiling

No peregrines to be seen to day so a steep haul up to the coastal path then home for a cup of untaxed, VAT-free tea.

Balancing act

The brilliant sunshine of the last few days of the year have been a welcome bonus to the flocks of wimter migrants, the fieldfares and redwings. The wet pasture is a smogasbord of wriggly delicacies to augment the few haws and berries left by the flailing hedgers. Why do the farmers choose the winter months to obliterate the food supplies of so many birds? I suppose they can't do it in spring because of nesting and, in the summer, it is just too much work, too much foliage. There can never be a right time to cut hedges but trimmed hedges are better than none at all.

It's all about the balance between us and our needs and those of the other inhabitants of our planet, the ones that don't have a voice. Difficult to maintain the balance but the responsibility is ours.

As a supporter of the reintroduction of the beaver to Scotland, I am pleased that the five year trial in Knapdale has been judged a success. Far from creating havoc as the doom-mongers predicted, the beavers have improved the natural environment as well as attracting tourists and their money to the area.

http://www.scottishbeavers.org.uk/

The next proposal is the introduction of the lynx, ostensibly to reduce roe deer numbers.

Which would you chase?

 Our own Scottish tiger, the wild cat, is highly endangered, no longer by persecution but by hybridisation with feral cats. Once widespread – there are cat-cleughs and cat-hills and cat-holes all over the country – these famously untameable, even if captive reared, predators are reduced to less than a hundred pure bred specimens.

 http://www.scottishwildcats.co.uk/

It is all about balance. Do we really need to continue to support subsidised borderline sheep farming when there is no demand for the wool and no profitability in the meat or should we re-balance the land use by “wilding” the rural landscape in favour of eco-tourism, forestry, and responsible access to the remote wild places that help us reconnect with the landscape?

Local fishermen are turning to providing transport for sea anglers and sub-aqua divers as the fish that sustained their forebearers are no longer there to be caught.

Communities can find other sources of revenue. It's all about adaptability.

Bison bred in captivity in Scotland are helping to bring genetic diversity to the herds of Romania, reintroduced there after extinction in the wild in the 1920's and there are calls for the wolf to be brought back to control deer numbers in the Highlands. 

http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/scottish-bison-to-be-reintroduced-to-wild-1-3391190 

http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/bring-back-wolves-to-highlands-john-muir-trust-1-3415318 

Now that is controversial. The wolf given the choice between chasing something that can run like Usain Bolt and is armed with a vicious kick and multibladed headgear and a fat wooly creature is likely to pick the latter. Keeping the wolves in the place they are meant to be will be problematic.

A difficult balance to achieve but it can be done.

While wandering about on the moors, I had an old map that showed some of the features and names missing from the latest editions. Crossing the Endless Knowes and passing the Boundary Stone, the names making me feel like I was in a passage from Tolkien, I came upon an ordinary little valley distinguished by the name of Wolf Cleuch.

Wolf Cleuch

The Boundary Stone

The last wolf was killed in Scotland in the 18^th century in Morayshire, how many years, how many centuries has it been since there were wolves at Wolf Cleuch?

Our land is too small with too many people on it for there to be any truly wild places. The wilding  would have to be managed. It would always be a sort of wildlife park. Wolves and lynx, bison and bears and even the wild cat are always going to be maintained in an artificial environment. We cannot go back to the 11^th century.

 If there is to be a move towards the reintroduction of predator species in this crowded island,it would be well to remember the Fool's words in King Lear

"He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf”

Still... it is an exciting prospect.

The rising of the sun

The solstice is past. The shortest day has come and gone and we are moving towards the long days of summer. They are far off but at least we are going in the right direction. 

The hellerboris niger, the Christmas rose, is in flower, just in time for Christmas.    Usually, it is weeks early or late but this year it is bang on cue. 

What evolutionary advantage does it give a plant to flower in winter? Far fewer insects about to act as pollinators but then no competition from other flowering species. Hmm? 

Unlike the hellebore, the winter sunrise did not appear ... well, at least, not in this airt.    Early morning found me up on the cliff tops scanning the eastern horizon.   Alas, cloudy skies resulted in a non-event. 

Sunrise

Unlike last year's spectacular burst of light (Blog 22/121/2013), this year was more like an Abstract Expressionist painting, a Rothko in blues and greys. Blocks of seeming emptiness with just a line of light between. I'm sure the shamans would have understood the meaning of it. 

Which is the Abstract Art?

Back in the village, the flashing electric blue and diamond white of the Christmas lights were stridently defying the winter gloom.We make our own sunshine now.