Author: David Miller

Into June now, still in lockdown, Scotland a bit behind England, not sure if that is exerting power or because we started later than England, but at least we can get out a bit more, including fishing 🙂 .

But who wanted to go out these last couple of days, gale force winds , plenty of much needed rain a freezing cold, down to 5C most mornings. To think last week it was shorts weather, well for most, my legs do not really suit shorts, so just had some summer trousers on instead. But I did get out & about in the garden that fine week before this one, so of course the camera came with me. Hence the rather large chunk of photos I have put onto this blog. Lets get through them, shall we?

Good news the Mill is open for takeaways on Saturdays, all marked out for social distancing, only two allowed in the café at once, most bread has to be ordered, but some spare for those that forgot to order.

Rami with his son David, plus all the ordered bread laid out ready for you to pick up, plus the all important, you can get coffee & Hot Chocolate to take away. Becoming a little ritual now on a Saturday morning, into Pitlochry to the Boating Café to pick up the weeks supply of scones, then onto Rami’s for bread & drink, could get used to this.

Back home we are having mixed responses to our nesting birds. The first shot of the Blue Tit I am afraid did not succeed in raising their young, they were the first nesters in the garden & I just do not think there was enough food about for them.

The Great Tit was struggling to find food, but feeding increased & I think they are doing well.

Only just found this other Blue Tit nest, not been occupied for 2 years so never really looked, but out of the corner of my eye one day I saw some movement around it & discovered a very active pair of adults feeding young, unfortunately the nest is well in the hedgerow & so very dark, but did manage to snatch these two shots, though seeing the backside is not the most glamourous of shots.

The Greater Spotted Woodpecker definitely has young as it spends most of the day on the feeders or taking mouthfuls of peanut butter away, eventually the parents will bring the young to the feeders, so maybe next blog I will have some shots of the youngsters.

The time it is not on the feeders the pair are ripping apart the old Ash tree stump looking for food, doing a fair old job of it they are as well. That is all ripped out by them, we have not touched it.

On a walk I noticed this wild Cherry with a cobweb stitched onto it & if you look middle left you can see a few remaining caterpillars within it.

Across the glen from us a field was treated with a weed killer & now has been ploughed & seeded, it looks so neat & a credit to the lonely driver in the cab, though the gulls following must keep him amused.

Because those first Blue Tit babes perished through lack of food, I have decided to start breeding Mealworms to subsidise their diet. Never successfully done this before so it is very much experimental & with the help of You Tube videos I hope I can succeed & keep an endless supply throughout the year. You buy them in this stage & then they turn into beetles, which you have to separate off as they will eat the remaining mates, then the beetles lay eggs, which again you have to separate. You keep them in any form of meal, oatmeal, cornmeal etc., these are in oatmeal, plus they need cover, hence the egg box & then moisture to drink which comes from banana skin, apple & potato. The last shot is all that is left of a slice of potato when they are finished with it. Really fascinating for children to grow on & learn lifecycles, plus the added advantage that my birds & pond fish enjoy them. Though it has taken the only birds to eat them so far, the Robins, 3 days to find them.

Unfortunately birthdays come around every year & I for one realise that I really am not getting any younger. This week was no special birthday but with lockdown & not really the exercise & workload of normal times I do feel a bit older. But it is surprising how birthday treats & presents make you feel happier about things. I had a delicious rib eyed steak for main meal, with a great glass of red wine, which always helps & then there was the my presents. I had an exhausted Ipad so the wife contributed towards a new one for me, one of my sons has got me a swivel head for my camera that will be so useful for some close up work on bugs & buds. The other gave me a portable bird hide, so when lock down is over I can go up on the moors early & photograph the wildlife close up (well in theory anyway). So old age isn’t so bad when you can have such a special day.

Below are a few shots of the hide & images taken from it, plus a few more.

On my last blog I showed you one of the two lambs in the field & it looked like it was dead lying so flat out asleep, above is proof that it is very much alive & healthy.

You have seen it before, but this is my homemade hide, which has been great for taking the static shots of the pond activity& will remain where it is for that purpose.

Well this is my pop up, portable hide, has four seating level openings & one ground level window for those low level shots. The thing with most pop ups is that they are easy to erect but not so easy to put away, as I found out last evening. 🙂

The first image taken from the hide, not sure if this is a baby Robin or Dunnock, but it was cute.

Not a fan of taking birds on feeders, but Woody was so close I just had to, this is a female & both it & the male are feeding young close by in the woods, not sure where the nest is.

Last one from the hide, late afternoon & the sun was just catching it’s eye & beak, which made it stand out against the blackness of it’s body & background, to be honest I totally love this shot, it was just a pity it had all that messy food in it’s beak.

Showing I am young at heart, I could not sleep on my birthday morning, call it excitement or maybe the call of the loo, not sure which. Anyway I decided to take the camera out into the garden in my dressing gown & see what was about. 3 Red Squirrels, that were to quick for me at that time of the morning, usual Blackbirds waiting for their sultana feed at the back door. Plus when I looked in the pond the Goldfish were having an orgy, now this is a sight I have not witnessed in my pond before virtually all 9 were gathered in the shallow section above the weed bed, with truly frantic movement. Went out an hour later (when dressed) & nothing, so maybe they were aware of my normal time of feeding them & were to embarrassed to exhibit such raw sex in front of me.

Not sure if I agree or understand the lifting of restrictions in England, but seems we might have some news on Scotland’s progress this week. As it’s my birthday week it would be a great present for me if Nicola said we could go fishing, most easily rule making sport with regard social distancing. Anglers have always had rules with regard how close you can fish near another angler, a sport of etiquette observing normally a 10 yard from each other rule be it competition or pleasure angling. Where I fish most occasions I am at a loch all by myself, almost the same as within our hamlet, could go days without seeing anybody.

I am not saying I am bored with this lockdown, after all the wife can (and does) find me plenty of jobs to do. But to get the rod out & catch a few trout would be great & add to the diet a bit more, after all during this time I have tied enough flies to last for the next ten seasons, just want to see if they work.

The weather lately has not been brilliant (minus 5 mid May is not brilliant), even on days when we have had some sun there has been a very cold Northerly or Northwesterly wind, which has left me with no desire to go sit in my hide & photograph the birds. Yesterday the wind did drop a bit & the sun did come out, so this window of opportunity allowed me to spend an hour in it. Below are a selection of te birds I saw.

Also, even though with no rain there is not a lot of grass for them, the sheep have been very active, another naughty lady has gone & had a baby out of wedlock, though the two lambs seem to be just staying with mum & not interacting like I thought they might. The sheep are getting desperate to be sheared & are constantly rubbing against the power poles & fencing, trying to get rid of their fleeces. Some have been fairly successful & are in various forms of nakedness, which is amusing, also photos below.

Not much more to tell you, hopefully next blog will contain a couple of Rainbow Trout on it?

A proud Mum Dunnock standing watch over her youngster (below).

It was funny watching this baby, it would sit on this log, flutter its wings as though it was bathing, then start to tidy it’s feathers as though they were wet. hasn’t quiet got the hang of washing yet.

A wee Coal Tit, lovely little bird spends all it’s time taking black sunflower seeds out of the feeder & burying them ready for winter, they very seldom find them, hence we get sunflowers appearing in our garden in some really strange places.

Got to admit these are my favourite small bird, this is a Male Siskin, beautiful colours & quite a thug on our feeders, does not take any nonsense from bigger birds.

What garden would not be complete without the show off of the bird world, the Robin, always willing to pose for you, always around when I am filling the feeders, in fact I was a bit late in putting some food out this morning & one was sitting on the feeder as if to say ” come on your late” & it never moved while I filled it & got it’s favourite seed out before any other bird knew food had arrived.

I know this looks like the lamb is dead, but it is just stretched out having a good morning nap. This is in fact the second & newest lamb born, both from Blackfaced Mums. The shot was taken from over 200m away, as neither mum brings the babies anywhere near us, they are very protective.

The other lamb, just a bit more active , but not much.

This is one of the perfect fleeced sheep, just to show you what they can look like fully clothed.

Will not take long to shear this one, a couple of days ago she had rolled onto her back to get rid of a bit more of the wool & I had to go out in the field to help her. She had been there sometime & as I got 3m away she was panicking & righted herself, so much for me being the rescuing hero in front of the wife.

Just like a lot of people at the moment she is in need of a hairdresser.

These last two are of the same sheep just from a different angle, in the one above she does not seem to weird, until you see her below.

Thanks for looking, please feel free to leave some comments, what you would like to see, what you have seen enough of etc. I would appreciate it.

No I am not overly bored with lockdown, just overly enthused by my new found method of photography. Using the same lens as yesterday I decided to go out & record some more shots of what is happening in the garden during this Springtime. There maybe a few repeat shots of things from yesterday, but sorry I just liked the shots & wanted to share them. I could have left them until next week, but, even though we have a cold snap coming in, things will be a lot more advanced next week & I can bore you some more.

The yellow Azalea is even more advanced than yesterday & is smelling powerfully.

The pink Rhodi is so delicate I am glad we have it in the garden, though my son will not approve.

Two different varieties of Tulips, they were discussing these on Gardener’s World this week & I was unaware that we had two of the yellow serrated edged ones within the garden, the wife of course put me right on that, I told you she was the gardener.

A great year for Primula’s, we have so many different colours, this particular one is a huge clump & the shot only shows about an eighth of it, I think the blue of the Forget Me Not’s really sets it off.

I like this small Daff, so plain but detailed, I saw on our local gardening show that if this was in a show the competitor would hold it behind the petals & gently twist it clockwise to get that top & bottom one in line with the stem & very obligingly it will stay there.

I did see the fly on this one before snapping it, so this time it was deliberate. But…..

Not the wee insect inside of this Poppy, my eyes are not that good.

Thought I would finish on a smiler shot, our local lambs having fun.

Yes folks it is May already & even with temperatures below zero most nights (my full moon theory once again) things are starting to move in the garden. I am no expert on gardening beyond mowing the lawn & cutting things down, but I have noticed & always have noticed changes in the garden. So what I decided to do in this lockdown is try & document as many different changes that I, the unobservant one, can notice. Most of the Spring Bulbs are still with us especially the Daffodils which are enjoying a good long season, Tulips have never been that successful up here, but what few we have, have gone over. Bluebells are on their way & as we normally have a great show of them I shall include them in a future blog. But what I want to concentrate on today is the growth of some shrubs etc. which shows Summer is on its way.

These shots are very experimental for me as I have used my very long, heavy telephoto lens to take close up shots (for those into photography my Sigma 150-600 C) I have used the lens before for things like the butterflies I showed you, where if you get to close they just fly away, on this occasion though it was just static things & a case of working out just how close I could get without the subject getting to out of focus, I hope I have achieved that though some are very slightly out of focus or “soft”.

Would love your comments on the idea after you have had a gander at the shots

Started with a couple of simple shots of one of the many Silver Birch in the garden, I just love the brightness of the sun shining through & on the leaves. For those observant enough you will notice on the second one I even capture a fly going towards the leaf, totally unintentional & as you will see from some other shots this has happened on a few of the them also.

A young Rowan tree just starting to sprout, again just loved the sun penetrating the outer part of the leaf. A saying up here (according to the wife’s Aunt) is that if you remove a Rowan from your garden you will get bad luck. We have removed so many, because they just grow throughout the garden, we must be the most unlucky couple in the whole of Scotland.

Another Rowan, this time not so advanced but once again there was no way I saw the fly sitting on the top bud, just shear skill of course.

The above to shots are of an Azalea, even in this state of the flower just about to unfold the scant coming off of it is wonderful. We are very fortunate that the previous owners planted a whole bunch of different ones down one side of the garden & not only is the flower display wonderful that scent is breathtaking, it just fills the whole area with wonderful perfume. Though these shrubs are getting old now & are covered in Lichen, we have the next generation of Azaleas growing all around them, so we should be able to enjoy them for years to come.

A not so popular member of that family (I presume they are any way?) is the Rhododendron, my wildlife expert son hates them as they have taken over many areas of the reserves he manages. But we have just the one big one that has spectacular flowers on & as you can see from this shot of one of it’s many buds they a fairly large & sweet smelling.

A Pieris, I love the way that the new growth is always a shade of red on this particular plant, a very hardy little plant at present that survives the harshest of our winters & gives us this great burst of colour.

Roses do not seem to like our soil much & the only two we have really successfully grown are climbers of which this is one, once again through the wonderful eye I have for such things ( 🙂 ) I have included a insect, this time a Greenfly, just to remind us time to get the spray gun out.

Next a completely different subject that I thought might be of interest to you all.

Every evening the sheep in the field in front of us make they’re way up to this the highest point in the field, where they eventually all lay down & sleep. On asking a shepherd why this was I was told because the higher you go the less midges & pest insects there are , which is really clever of them. In the first shot I took the picture showing a smaller bunch & how they settle down. As you can see they are sheep with no lambs, but virtually every year we get one naughty lady who must go off & find herself a fella, this year is no exception, can you see the one lamb that was born in our field?

Following on from the last blog, we have at last had some decent rain & all the garden has benefited from it, new growth everywhere, especially the weeds, which seem to come from nowhere. It has been said many times before that a weed is just a plant in the wrong place, I can assure you the wife does not agree with that, she would say a weed is something that is determined to take the garden over & if left it would. The worst this year seems to be between, what we call Milkmaids & wild Garlic or Ransom to give it it’s correct name. As neither of us like Garlic you can see that this is a bit of a problem, though it is said that wild Garlic is much milder than the “real” stuff. I hopefully will never know.

Of course along with a bit of rain & sunshine the grass starts to grow, which in turn means that it has to be mowed, I personally hate doing the first cut because you then know that for every week from then on it is going to need cutting, true to form mine has had two haircuts, though I am keeping it fairly long until no chance of a frost to damage it.

I also stated last blog that birds were starting to pair up & most have, we realised that the Blackbirds (who are always the first) were still queueing up at the back door for their early morning sultanas, but were in fact storing them in their beaks instead of eating them. So we therefore knew they had babes somewhere (the first year for ages I haven’t found a nest) & today we got our first fledgling Blackbird of the season. The beauty of this (if it survives) is that after a few weeks the parents bring their youngsters to the early morning sultana feed & we can see how they are progressing, I will try to get some shots of this when it happens. So below is that first fledgling hiding, thinking I cannot see it, don’t worry I had my long lens on & was well away from it, social distancing you might say.

Also last blog I told you about the Sparrows nesting, I think the majority of last years sites are now taken, but do not think there are any additional ones. So below are some shots of those sights & two of the most established ones you will see are so full of debris I am not sure what room there will be for eggs, let alone babes.

Well we might still be in lockdown, but we have a lot to keep us entertained & I hope that you are suitably occupied during this difficult time, just all stay safe, obey the rules & we will ALL get through this.

Okay we are still in lockdown & living up here in the wilds, I consider myself very lucky to be surrounded by beautiful countryside, nature at its best & so better off than those poor souls locked away in a high rise flat in the middle of a city.

Mother Nature is sure putting on a show at this time of the year, though we are having some cold days, mainly due to the North winds, the daytime has mainly been sunny & though like farmers we always find something to moan about weather wise it is a cracking Spring. We have not seen rain for sometime & none is forecast for a week or so and that is making it hard for the gorgeous spring plants, but a gentle watering in the evening is helping them to keep giving us a magnificent show.

The birds are really active, chasing mates & defending their territories especially our Dunnocks, there must either be a shortage of females or a surplus of males, as you cannot go 5 minutes without seeing or hearing a dispute amongst them.

Today is a wind free even warm day, even had lunch & lunchtime snooze out in the garden, which is a first for the year. One advantage of such a day is plants stay still to get some decent shots of them & we have the emergence of butterflies & bees. One thing I must confess I am not very good on my insect identification, leave that to my youngest son who goes miles to locate a certain type of butterfly or moth & though I of course taught him everything about photography, he takes far better photos than me of such things.

If I had to choose where I would want to spend lockdown then I would not change from where I live now. We can go for our daily exercise up the glen or even down to the village & not see a soul, no self caterers in the holiday lets, nobody looking at an O.S. map & not having a clue where they are, just us locals, keeping in touch but socially isolating a bit more than normal.

Forgot to mention we never have sheep with us during the winter, they go off somewhere a bit warmer or less bleak, but this week they have returned to our field, roughly 100 of them & so good to see.(still a bit of snow on the hills)

The view looking the other direction to the sheep showing what a lovely day it is.

A closer view of yonder hills.

Greater Spotted Woodpecker, a regular visitor to the garden, either on the peanuts or eating from the jar of peanut butter which it loves & always goes up to this branch to wipe the surplus of his beak. (You can tell it is a male by the red bit on it’s neck.)

Male House Sparrow calling for a mate to come to the nest box hotel, the box it is standing on, plus the one above , have 3 sections in each as these birds love to nest in a colony. We never had any House Sparrows here when we moved in & over the years have slowly built up our own colony last year they used 5 nest boxes, two in the hotel block, one above my bedroom window, one in an artificial House martins nest & one on the end of the garage. Noisy whatsits in the summer early morning, but worth it.

Finally on the bird front, my wife’s favourite bird the Wren, seems now to be in the habit of arriving at the pond 5.30ish each evening , having a bath & disappearing again, must be a female to have such a set routine.

As I said do not ask me to tell you which species this is, eventually my son will answer my email & tell me.

How full of Spring is this a lovely little butterfly on Primroses, plus sunshine, perfect combination.

I know back to the last topic, but on a sunny day daffs certainly shine out & cheer you up, along with the other Spring flowers of course.

Hope this has cheered you all up, unless you are stuck in that flat, but we will all get through this if we obey the rules & try & smile each day. At least if you are in that flat, you have not got the long list of outdoor jobs my Mrs has been giving me:-

Workshop tidied. (tick)

Rotten gate fixed. (tick)

Lawn fertiliser down. (tick)

Blood, Fish & Bone on the shrubs. (tick)

Still to do :-

Mow lawns, tidy woodshed, chainsaw next winters wood pile, the list is never ending. 🙂

And so it goes on, a complete lockdown, just out for exercise & food etc.

The number of cases is slowly rising in Scotland, but outside of the cities the rural population seems to be taking it more serious , even in our small towns people do not feel so cooped up, it must be so hard in a inner city flat with children. A garden is certainly a helpful addition to stop one from becoming to bored. To prove that the majority of my photos today are concentrated around the garden, as we start to see a steep rise in the amount of colour that is appearing. Colours lift spirits rather than dull dead greenery that winter has given us, the lighter evenings now the clocks have changed helps as well & that wonderful bright full moon last night made it seem like a summers day as it was fairly light even at 3 in the morning.

Birds are starting to pair up, we have Blue Tits investigating the many choices of nest boxes within the garden, though out of maybe a dozen to choose from they nearly always seem to go for the same ones as last year. Heard a fact yesterday that 70% of British birds are monogenous, which I was unaware of. Blackbirds are definitely sitting on eggs somewhere nearby ( always like to find at least one nest to photograph each year), how do I know. Well 2 females have a routine, they come straight to the back door maybe twice a day, feed, then bathe, then disappear again, where all winter they have just hung around waiting for us to offer them more sultanas. Our group of Dunnocks are skitting around the garden flirting with each other, while the House Sparrows just steal the House Martins artificial nest & fill it with whatever junk they can fit in to overflowing. Male Pheasants have a habit of sitting under our bedroom windows flapping their feathers & calling out, usually at about 6.30 in the morning, which can be annoying, but they realise that shooting season is well over & they are safe.

So what am I photographing in these entrapped times, I would love it to be those huge Trout that I would have caught if only we were allowed to fish, or scenery from further afield on a day out, but no I have restricted myself to within the garden this week. Mainly Spring plants, but also the noisy frogs in my garden pond, not that easy to get decent shots of because the slightest movement & they just submerge themselves for what seems ages under the water. Hope you like the few I have included? Two huge lumps of frog spawn in the pond already.

In these times of lock down there are fairly few things an old man can do to relieve the boredom. In my case it is fly tying, with the hope that sometime this season I MAY get out onto the waters & catch a few trout, but there are only so many flies I can tie to fill my boxes even fuller with flies that will most probably not see the light of day again. Watch some telly, which are mainly repeats as no telly is being produced at present. Listen to the radio, well even The Archers has made no mention of the virus yet, so that shows how long ago the episodes were produced. Or go out on your daily hour of exercise & of course take your camera with you.

The forum that I belong to & love is for members that purchase the Canon EOS Magazine and a wonderful source of all things to do with the said cameras, including of course photographs, I have been a contributor to these from the beginning & through comments & advice have learnt so much about this magical artform.

Over the last few days I have placed on the site shots that I have taken on these walks & the usual group of misfits have encouraged me to take some varied shots to show them the area that I am so lucky to live in. So I thought while I have a minute, no hour, no wait all day, I would share some of these shots with you

Firstly my favourite tree, I think I have put this particular tree on before but it just suited the mood of that first walk damp, miserable & lonely.

The little Lochan we walk past fairly regularly always got some ducks on it & in summer teeming with small brown trout, one day Alistair will give me permission to have a play on it.

I always have a smile on my face when I have the precious site of seeing the first of this years lambs, temperatures down to minus 7C but these hardy little beast’s just get on with it.

Add to that calves jumping about in the sunshine & how can you not enjoy Spring?

Such adorable creatures, almost & I said almost, makes me think why do I enjoy beef so much, even better a proper welfare produced piece of veal (sorry).

Looking at this beast makes me think I wonder if he enjoys being surrounded by such beauty, surely he could not have a more picturesque view?

Much the same could be said about these two young Highland bulls.

This lady appears in a fair few of my shots & as I am in confinement with her (& her with me), would I dare say anything detrimental about her.

My Rockstar Games bird, she has only tried playing one of the GTA games once & that was so funny I still have the video of it.

A cracking view down to Blair Castle & beyond, to think jets come through this Glen below the height of those hills before climbing up roughly in the middle dip. I love watching them.

We also get these beast’s flying very low over us, this one caught us by surprise on one of the walks, hence I didn’t get the whole craft in.

Our house tucked into the little hamlet we live in, both the brown wooden & the stone cottage behind us are holiday lets & the roof on the right is our friends second home, but they are all very empty with this present lock down & with only 3 of the 7 houses permanently occupied it is very eerie up here.

A very frustrating site the water where I go Rainbow Trout fishing is off limits at present, which I cannot understand, as you can see it is fairly big, at the most you may get 5 people fishing & if that, plus the exercise in casting isn’t social distancing, then what is?

A walk along the River Tilt was a worth while trip today, so tranquil.

As you know I go on about the Watermill, it’s bread, its hot chocolate, its scones, its staff & owners, Well today should have been opening day for the season, but for justifiable reasons Kirsty & Rami have decided not to open. So a well marked date on the calendar has been postponed, making us even more determined to obey the rules & stay home accept for our daily walks & keep well.

I finish with that same sentiment to you all, stay well & we will get through this, honest.

Did it yet again, the day after putting the blog about Spring, overnight our clear skies sent the temperature tumbling down to MINUS 7C. One consolation, what a cracking morning, as seen below.