Author: David Miller

I am on the committee of the local branch of the Scottish Wildlife Trust & I have organised a talk that a few of you might be interested in , details are all around the village on the notice boards, but in case you have missed it here is the posters. Should be a good, but controversial talk.

 

Yes it’s here at last, no not the long awaited spring weather, they say we are going to get more snow this weekend. No not the long awaited Lottery win, or even Premium Bonds. No something far more important than all of those.

Yes my new camera has arrived, so I have now got a much improved one, the same as my nephew’s & youngest son’s (don’t you just hate it when these youngsters know the one you want & purchase it before you). It is the all singing & dancing Canon 7d Mark 2, been out a few years now but was always the camera of my dreams since I started taking my hobby a bit serious.

As per usual could have done with it on our weekend away, as visited some great wildlife reserves in Yorkshire, but it is here now. Have rebuilt my little hide in the garden & first thing this morning I was out in it to capture the usual suspects near the feeder.

First the very colourful Male Chaffinch, starting to look good in it’s breeding colours. Second a Male House Sparrow, again looking good. We had in the first five years of living here no Sparrows nesting in the garden, so I made two Sparrow hotels for them (just 3 boxes in one block as they like to live in colonies) & it seems to have worked as the population has shot up, with up to ten coming to the feeders. they have also taken over a Blue Tit box & each year attempt to take on the House Martin pots before the Martins return, I now have to fill the pots with rags until I see the first Martin flying around.

The last one is of a Female Chaffinch, isn’t it strange that birds are the exact opposite to humans, with the males always the brighter coloured birds, where the human “birds” are always way prettier than us drab fellas.

Hope you can see the difference in the quality of these shots, as SWMBO states she can see no difference, married to a peasant me.

 

 

 

 

 

I have had a complaint that my blog this winter has shown The Cairngorms to much associated with snow, which I consider a bit unfair, cos that is us. When the people down south moan about temperatures dropping to a minus 6, hardly a week has gone by this winter when we have not gone down to such temperatures. A couple of inches of snow is nothing to us, it is only when we get conditions like this last week that it is getting close to unusual.

The snow came late to us this week, but when it did we had our fair share of it (still snowing today), 4″ one night followed by 4″ the next & down to minus 9C. Most unusually it closed the village primary school & Pitlochry High school, which spells bad news for us. The snow plough has a priority route of up our glen to allow the school bus to take home the remote children further up it. With the school closed, no snow plough for two days until the priority routes were cleared. This caused a very large drift on the road above our house & eventually when the plough arrived it couldn’t cope & took two snow ploughs & a JCB over an hour to clear the 100yds of the drift, to cold for me to venture out with the camera to photograph it, sorry.

Yesterday we had a small window with no snow & we walked down the village to collect some bread, as The Mill had baked. Hence the chance to get the shots below, walking along the River Tilt, very pretty it was to.

First four shots are of the gin clear water & the snow covered rocks, with hints of ice formed in the still flowing sections. The other is of the tree lined, snow covered walk beside the river, a most enjoyable walk. All photos taken with my old basic camera, ordering the NEW one tomorrow.  🙂

As we enter spring I hope to give you shots & items on things other than snow, but who knows the winter may not want to let go just yet.

 

 

 

Firstly some sad news, more or less a death within the family, while trying to get some shots of Bullfinches down in the village, my poor much used & valued Canon 700d camera & I had a falling out on the ice. The result of which the camera has died completely. Less than a month ago I had it repaired at great expense & it was working like a dream, the fall managed to crack the casing around the memory card & battery area, so now awaiting the insurance company to see when & if they are going to pay out. Though there were no images on the memory card the next day when I went to take the memory card out, it had melted to the frame work, So some heat must have been generated during the crash.

So for a while I am afraid you will have to put up with my shots coming out of my small “old” camera.

You know when you see faces in everyday objects, such as toast, trees & the like, well until the forum (that I show my photographs on ) set this months challenge to capture these, I was unaware that it actually has a name. It is called Facial Pareidolia, and the first photo below is of the Gorilla in the Oak tree, which I hope you can see, that I have submitted to the challenge. The challenge closes on Sunday so let us see how I get on, I am up against an arrangement of fridge magnets, an image of Elvis in Ivy an old pumping station complete with window eyes & mouth door & a snowman face formed on a bush.

The second shot today is of frost on the porch window, it looked like a forest in front of our view & was gone 10 minutes later with the sun shining through the window.

The last two are of one of my favourite little flowers, the Snowdrop. What a bulb, about the first plant to come up in the garden & up here gets such a lot of knocks in it’s progress to bloom. Covered by thick snow, temperatures like the last couple of days, going up to 9C during the daytime, with bright sun beaming down on it, followed by the opposite during last night, down to minus 6C. In fact when I took these shots this morning it was still minus 4C. There it is standing bold, upright & beautiful under such conditions, what other plant would do that, wonderful.

So if you look around you  can always see the wonders of this strange natural world & we have not got around to the birds getting into their stunning breeding plumage yet.

Oh while on the subject of birds, I have (after 2 years of trying) got a young lady from the Tay Bird Ringers to come & net my birds sometime next month, so that I will be able to recognise my local birds from migrants. Watch this space.

 

 

 

 

Most probably this is the strangest winter we have had since being here, I am not alone in saying this even the real locals have not seen one like this for years. We seem to go on alternate days of green fields, then white, green then white, continuously. Today as you can see is a white one. The only constant factor is that the Munro’s have stayed white, which is good as it allows the ski centres to do a roaring trade, bad as we have had the usual hill walkers getting caught out in the bad conditions & having to be rescued, not always with good outcomes.

We woke up to a heavy snow storm this morning depositing a fair lump at our level, about 2″ . Unusually no snow plough up today (expect because it is half term & they only come up to clear to allow the school bus up), so it was fun getting out to Pitlochry , but with care we did it & on our return the amount of traffic & the sun had cleared it away. Decided to go up & take some photos further up the hill this afternoon, but only got a third of the way as the higher I got the thicker & worse the roads got. Did managed the shots below, which show you just how beautiful our countryside looks in these conditions.

The first 3 shots our the trees up the Glen, the tall shot showing Carn Liath, have not managed to climb this even in the summer (just to old), a couple of years ago I got to about as high as the top of the tree, which is just about halfway.

The 4th shot is Monzie Farm ( pronounced monaaaa) nestled down in the Glen and a fairly remote  place to live, I should think the only way out for them today was on a quad bike.

Just coming back down from taking those photos & out the corner of my eye I saw a large bird flying, only to realise it was a Heron, a strange place to find one, on the moors, but I guess there would be plenty of frogs around in the damp, boggy areas. Anyway he landed & I set my camera up, but do you think I could find it, it was so well camouflaged by the snow. Eventually I did spot it & managed the attached shot.

 

The last few days have been wintery up here, snow, low temperatures, just very dull. But one of the advantages of such weather is that we get many more birds coming to the garden to get some food in them. Flocks of 30 to 40 Chaffinch are common, at least 10 Blackbirds, all the Tit family including 12 Long Tailed Tits every day. Over the last week or so these birds have been very nervous & at the slightest movement they were off into the bushes & trees.

We have seen a Sparrowhawk sweep through the garden & have managed to frighten it off on several occasions. But if we go out for any length of time, we come home to a pile of feathers somewhere in the garden. With the large numbers of birds around it is inevitable that birds of prey will take advantage of that. So these very clever birds are only being resourceful and I should admire them for that. But it is not much fun just finding a pile of feathers.

The one below has been about all morning & as I looked out of the window, there he sat beside the feeders, just waiting for a brave bird to come & feed. Fortunately my camera was beside me & I managed this shot, though as you can see he was (excuse the pun) watching me like a hawk. Scared him off straight after this, but 1/ it was a wonderful opportunity to photograph him. 2/ what a cracking looking bird. 3/ I didn’t take a different sort of shot at him.

Sorry about the branch in front of him & also for the fact it was through the double glazing, making the lower half of the bird a bit out of focus.

 

 

Every now & then one of those days comes along that will sit in the memory box for a long time, at my age I cannot say forever because my memories do not seem to stay in my brain to long. But this does not stop me at least enjoying the moment.

As I drew the curtains back yesterday morning half way across the field in front of us stood 3 large Red Deer stags. Of course I grabbed the camera & went to the front door, meanwhile my wife phoned the carer that is working at the bottom of our drive, she comes from New Zealand & had told me she would love to see the deer.  I took about a dozen shots before looking at them on the camera screen, only to discover that I had it on the wrong settings and all of them were way to dark ( even to post process). So while I was changing my settings the carer must have come rushing out to take some shots on her phone. This frightened them off & by the time I had lifted my camera up they were gone. Utter disappointment for me.

But, fortune shone down on me because about 3.30 that afternoon, they were back in the same place. Camera settings right this time, I managed to get a few shots off. I guess they must have been fairly mature stags looking at the antlers on them. The two shots I have included are the best of the bunch & the one of the stag jumping the fence is getting some great responses on my Flickr page and the Canon Forum I contribute to.

The first shot is what greeted me this morning when I opened the curtains, though I waited until it stopped snowing & I had a bit more light before taking it. As it was such a dull day I decided to take it in black and white. I quite like the affect of b&w  in situations like this because it shows the different shades in such colours. Hope it goes down okay with you to.

 

 

 

 

 

Every other Monday during the winter months, some volunteers run a soup lunch for all the villagers to come to. All soups & cakes are provided free, plus there is a raffle. All proceeds go to the village hall restoration fund and are providing some good financial help.

Today there was a choice of three different soups all excellent, but I had the vegetable one & it was so good, more veg than liquid thick warming, delicious.

First shot is just a few of the 30 or so people that attended, which considering our weather was great.

2/ A few more folk including Pam one of the volunteer ‘s who waits on us hand & foot, this is the sort of people we have in this village always willing to help each other.

3/ One of the stalwarts of the lunches is our lovely Bumble, a professional chef who can turn her hand to do anything & is fully involved in all that goes on in the village, a real gem. She announced to us today that she is moving to Edinburgh, what will the village do without her?

In the background of Bumbles photo you will see one of the diners who did really well in the raffle & is holding a brace of pheasants he won. All raffle prizes are donated & Val & Eric do a great job of selling them & taking the money for the lunches. I did take a photo of them but it was out of focus & rubbish, cannot put that on here can I?

Then tonight was another meeting in the hall, held by the Cairngorm National Park Authority on the development plan for the park & how that affects the village. An hour at looking at their plans & then a around the table general discussion on what the villagers want from the plan. I only went down for the first hour & had a look at what is proposed for the area. Of course when the A9 trunk road is finished this could have an impact on us, with all sorts of developments taking place as more tourists choice the much improved route northwards. Within the planning is more expansion of the caravan & camping sites, some of which we knew would & is happening with Atholl Estates enlarging the log cabin site. They7 had a few preferred sites for new housing two small sites with 8 houses on each one. funnily enough both on our side of the village, but 3/4 & 1 mile away from us, not really a huge impact, but lets hope that some will be affordable housing , just to keep the youngsters in the area. As a National Records of Scotland report reckons that over the next 25 years, the population of pensionable aged people within the park will rise by 23% and number of people over 75 will go up a staggering 97%. Looks like it will be the biggest old peoples home in Scotland.

 

 

 

I have received a few emails asking for more shots of our snow covered Cairngorms, I must admit these photos were requested from down south,  (of which I was resident until moving up here 12 years ago) & of course down there if they have an inch of snow they think they are living in the Arctic. . So today I took a few photos from within the house of the birds & then on our walk up to Loch Moraig

We started our hour long walk in lovely sunshine, but halfway back the snow began to fall on us & we ended up looking like snow man & women.

On our walk we will always come across this small herd of cows who have the freedom of the moors & although well fed with silage, not a place I would choose to be this time of the year. So the first shot is of one of the herd.

2/ is one of the few Silver Birch that scatter the glen, covered in snow, but still showing up against the snowy background.

3/ t06/ are of birds taken through the kitchen window, the absolute mass of birds we have in the garden each day are costing me a fortune to feed, but so worth it. I am not exaggerating when I say we have upwards of a hundred birds in the garden every single day.

3/ is 4 Long Tail Tits & a Blue Tit on one of 5 peanut feeders in the garden. These delicate little birds are only regular with us during the winter, but so welcome, such sociable birds, not many other species would allow other species to feed with them without a superiority squabble, but they do as is evident with the Blue Tit.

4/ Is a Great Tit posing nicely for me on the stump, keeping it’s legs up out of the snow.

5/ A Blue Tit on the feeder which is 6 inches from the kitchen window, hence the pale shot caused by the glass reflection.

6/ This little Blue Tit decided it wanted to see those weird humans in their nest keeping nice & warm.

7/ Half way up our walk we looked across the glen & on a very distant hill we saw this mass of Red Deer stag. This is when I wished I had my good camera with my long lens on (camera repaired & back with me next Tuesday) because this old one does not show them very clearly. I have enlarged it & managed to count approx. 135 stags in the herd. Also on the way back on the next hill was another herd of about 60, but due to the snow starting to fall I never got a shot of them.

Hope this quenches your thirst for snow shots & roll on Tuesday when I can provide a better quality of photos.

 

 

 

 

 

Not very often I post two days running, but as the snow is still here & getting thicker, thought I would post some new photo’s. The first four are from yesterday afternoon, we went for a walk up towards Loch Moraig. I do not think we would have made it as far as we did, but after what must have been a tough morning , the snow plough made it up to us (normally here before 1030am, in fact today it was up at half eight). So though on the walk UP the hill he had not put grit down, so just a bit slippery, we met him half way up, with him coming back down and he was salting the road then. Therefore the return journey for us was easier.

The first two shots were just to show you how stunning the Cairngorms look with some snow around, especially when it stays on the trees.

3/ is the returning snow plough.

4/ Is the wife walking in the wet salty road on our way home.

5/ is from this morning, in between the continuing snow showers I was able to clear all the drive down to the road, then salt it. A task that normally takes me an hour, today due to the fact that in places it was 12″ deep, It took me two hours. Okay we were not going out in the car today, but I like to have it all clear for the postie or any emergency vehicle who may need to come to us or our neighbour in the white house (bottom right of the shot). Once an emergency service employee always thinking like you still are.

6/ Just in case you were not sure if I was using my fisherman measurement to get the depth of the snow, this is the build up on our roof. I have gone around the guttering slicing the snow off at that angle, as when it overflows the guttering, it semi melts & goes into icicles, which has in the past  bent the guttering.