Cairngorms Life

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.

 

 

We were forecast some bad weather over the next couple of days and as we had a funeral to attend this morning, 50 miles away in Killin. I was up at 630 to see approx. 4″ of snow. Went out armed with snow shovel & cleared a track all the way down to the bottom of our steep hill some 500 yards, turned round to do another track a car width up the hill, only to find that I could hardly see where the first clearance had been because of the blizzard that was now falling. Very upset we couldn’t get to the funeral, but I do not think we would have made it.

Came in all hot & sweaty, jumped in a bath & by the time I was out , another two inches had fallen. How I wish my camera was back from repair ( another 10 days & a couple of hundred pound before that happens), but in a lull in the weather I went out & fed the birds & took a few shots with my old camera, so not excellent but hope they will show what it is like.

I do not think I have ever seen such a dark angry sky heading towards us, so I knew we were about to get another bucket load of snow & sure enough it hasn’t stopped for the last hour adding yet another inch.

The shots below are as follows,

1/ our drive which I had cleared an hour before with the snow shovel, burnt some calories , but really a waste of time.

2/ Rod reads my blog, so I thought I ought to include a photo of his house in the snow, very wise not to be up here at the moment.

3/ The Robin followed me around until I gave it some food.

4/The dark clouds approaching with yet more snow. The photo really does not do justice to just how dark the sky was.

 

 

 

Okay it is not as cold as New York, but it is not far off up here at present. When I got up the thermometer read Minus 10C when I looked at the minimum it went down to last night it was MINUS 13C , which in my books is pretty cold. In the 12 years we have been in this house our lowest recording was minus 18C, so a fair way off our coldest, but it is still pretty cold.

Of course the hills look wonderful & if only I had had my camera yesterday our Munro’s were superb, covered in snow & the sun shining down on them was magical. Went up to try getting them on my old camera & they were covered in cloud & totally not photogenic.

So I came down to 50 yards from our house & took a few shots of our little burn. At the point I photographed is a small dam, because in the past it was where some of the water was diverted another 50yds down the hill to a shed with a large concrete tank in it. this in turn was gravity fed down into the village to fill the steam locomotives with water. Now this shed is used as a hatchery for Loch Morag Brown Trout to be hatched in, before getting to a size to be returned back into the Loch.

This dam then comes over a waterfall which is frozen & as fresh water flows over the frozen water so it freezes again & gets pretty thick. The flowing water splashes up the banks producing the attached photos. .

These shots were taken with my old camera that I have not used for 8 or so years & I was surprised at just how good they turned out.

 

 

 

 

I have written before about the Country Life Museum here in the village, it is covered by volunteers and this time of the year is one of their main fund raising times. As you have seen, apart from the normal clubs, table tennis, choir, ballet & indoor bowls, not a lot goes on for villagers. So the museum celebrates the Gaelic New Year according to the pre- Gregorian calendar. Which is Friday 12 January.

This always becomes a well attended night, it maybe minus 10C outside (as it is this morning) but be assured the people inside will be warm. Entertainment includes a ceilidh band, pipers, sword dancing & an open mic session.

Of course there will be a well stocked (and used) bar, plus food, comprising of one of my favourites, clootie dumpling & some delicious home made soup.  All this for £10, you cannot beat that. All profits from the evening go to the Museum funds.

This will be my first post without any photographs on it, at the moment my camera seems to have a focusing fault, so it has had to go away to a Canon repair shop, lets hope it can be fixed, as I never go anywhere without it firmly glued to my side. I have my old, old camera that shall have to resurrect & see if it will be good enough for some future shots on here, getting a bit fussy about quality in my old age.

Firstly, Happy New Year to you all, yes I did go out & shout up the glen at the bells but due to the low cloud & general dampness I only heard 3 echo off the hills.

Now if I still lived down south I would have lots to report about the horrid weather they are experiencing, gale force winds coastal flooding etc. But up here it has been so “normal”. Occasional flurry of snow, minus temperatures on waking, warming up to a stunning 5C during the day, overcast, bit of rain. Just nothing happening at all. My son came up for New Year & he is more crazy on wildlife than me & being young has wonderful eyesight, which he points things of interest out to me & I put the bino’s onto & can just about see. So it was of no surprise when he found a herd of Red Deer stags way over on the distant hillside, this is where they can often be seen  & only come closer when the snow is deep & they struggle to find food. This year being no real continuous deep snow has meant they can stay more out on the moors to feed, away from humans.

But it did remind me of when the hills were heavy with snow in March 2015, but down at our level it had all gone. A large herd of young Red Deer got spooked by something & ran into the field below our house. They were really spooked & just ran round in circles not knowing where to go, they stayed here for a good twenty minutes in shear panic. Of course out came the camera & below is just one of the many shots I got before they ran up the field, over the fence into the next one & were off. A wonderful moment for us & our neighbours, who, during their 30 odd years of living here had never seen anything like it.

 

Firstly may I wish all the loyal people who have encouraged me to carry on writing this nonsense, a very happy new year, may 2018 bring you joy, happiness & all you want out of life. I can assure you I am looking forward to this coming year with a great deal of hope. Hope to take better photos, hope to catch more trout, hope for good health & most of all, hope that I make it to our 50th wedding anniversary in August. That is mainly because of the wonderful understanding misses I have & I know this milestone will bring her much joy.

I must say after all the cold weather, snow & ice it is so unusual to say that this is such a mild day, 4C and still creeping upwards. A very strong wind & loads of heavy rain overnight has left us with green fields & pools of water everywhere. The first photo is the field in front of our house, when this large puddle arrives we know we have had a fair downpour. somewhat to our surprise a young Heron obviously thought this was a pond for it to catch something, waded across it, saw there was nought in it & flew off again.

The second shot shows how the rain is still falling with the spots on our window, also how this mild rain has melted the snow from the adjacent hill. No doubt we will here the Fender Burn thundering through tonight, as all that snow melt goes down to the River Tilt, then onto the River Garry, which eventually enters the longest river in Scotland The Tay.

I shall be out at midnight (as my own tradition dictates) shouting at the top of my voice “Happy New Year” and see how many echoes I get back bouncing of the hills, one year, on a particularly still night, I had six, but normally it is 4. Silly old fool that I am.