Cairngorms Life

I am a member of The Scottish Wildlife Trust & today one of our committee members organised a small walk on the Limestone Pavement just East of Kinloch Rannoch. The weather was wet & windy, so please excuse the photos as conditions were not good.

The pavement is made up of Dalradian Limestone & is roughly 600 million years old, so old in fact that unlike other Limestone it does not contain any fossils. It is a SSSI site so it is very rare, it is said to be the best example in the whole of Scotland & drifted over to us from Norway in one of the ice ages.

In between the rocks are worn away sections that can go down 6 feet & are called grykes, while the higher areas are called clints. Because the grykes are small & fairly inaccessible to sheep & deer various plants can grow & not be eaten, these include Rock Rose, Thyme, Northern Felwort, Dog’s Mercury, Herb Robert & Herb Bernet, Wood Sorrel & best of all Wild Strawberries.

On the pavement are two big lumps of Schist that seem out of place amongst the Limestone, but these must have also drifted with the glazier, local folk law has a different tale & claims they are two witches turned to stone.

The talk & walk took about an hour & there was seven of us being shown around & it was of great interest, I had passed the area many times on the road some fifty yards below us & had never been aware of their existence.

I was about a mile away from one of my favourite fishing lochs so after the talk went & had a couple of hours fishing (with no success of course)  in what can only be described as very brisk conditions, pretty near to blowing a gale, but good fun in such a cracking place.

The photos below were from this morning & in order are :-

1/ The view over to Kinloch Rannoch & Loch Rannoch.

2/ The Munro (mountain over 3000 ft) Schiehallion.

3/The witch rock.

4/ Strawberries in the grykes.

5/A rare wild Gentian.

6/ Loch Kinardochy where I fished.

 

 

 

I said I wouldn’t write anymore about birds unless we had a quiet day, well went to the gym this morning, came home & it has more or less rained ever since, so yes it is one of those quiet days. The pictures below were all taken this afternoon of birds I have not included on my blog so far, 1/ A Greater Spotted Woodpecker. 2/ A juvenile Blue Tit. 3/ A Greenfinch. All shots were through double glazing with rain on the windows, so not my best ones, but there was no chance to take the camera outside to take them.

I thought I would also include a list of the birds we have spotted from indoors or out in the garden, not sure if I have left any off but this is roughly it.

 

Tit family are, Blue, Great, Coal & Long Tailed. Siskin, Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Redpoll, Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Wood Pidgeon, Collar Dove, Sparrow Hawk, Buzzard, Blackbird, Thrush, Mistle Thrush, Redwing, Fieldfare, Goldcrest, Wren, Tree Creeper, Pheasant, Pied Wagtail, Meadow Pipit, Swallow, House Martin, House Sparrow, Dunnock & Robin. A total of 28 birds, which is great. We have seen Osprey a fair distance away feeding on one of the Rainbow Trout Lochs that I fish & also what we believe was a Hen Harrier quartering in a distant field. We frequently hear Tawny Owls & once a Little Owl, but non outside the list are ones that we can class as regular visitors to us.

Just been through the bird book & as a further addition will add the following, Brambling, Nuthatch, Oyster Catcher, Warbler (not sure which one , but think Garden), Goldfinch, Bullfinch & Red legged Partridge. So total now stands at 35.

One visitor that comes daily is the Sparrow Hawk, an unwelcome guest who normally has a bird a day, you do not see it everyday, but the feathers are found of various small birds in certain places in the garden. On one occasion I was in the garden & tried to frighten it away & it came straight at me, I swear that if I had not have ducked it would have got me.

On the other hand our Buzzards are fairly friendly, I have mouse traps in our tiny cellar & in the loft as they are always trying to establish themselves in our house & if I do catch a mouse I will throw it into the field & daily the Buzzard will swoop low over the house to see if there is a meal for him. Where it thinks this meal comes from I have no idea, but it knows it has a regular source of food to feed its youngsters. A pair most years nest in a nearby Oak tree & this year I think they only had one young one.

Lets hope tomorrow brings a better day as I am going on a guided walk over some nearby Limestone pavement, so guess what tomorrows blog will be on?

It is not all rose tinted glasses here in Blair Atholl, a few things against it include distance to decent shops & supermarkets, Perth is over 30miles away along the dreaded A9 & another fault is delivery of goods ordered on the internet. Sometimes we have to pay more because we are in this remote place called the Highlands, the annoying thing about this con is that a vast majority is delivered by Royal Mail so does not cost the companies any more than if it was going 100yds down the road. Today we are awaiting a new vacuum cleaner as ours blew up over the weekend, the delivery time allocated to us is between 7am & 7pm, so of course no wondering off for one of us, just got to wait until it turns up.

So as I am having a quiet day I thought I would share some of the birds that visit our garden (apart from yesterdays Sparrows that is). Below is a selection, I will save the many more until another quiet day.

First is birds on the Niger seed feeder, 8 of which are Siskins with a stray Chaffinch on the left. Next is a female Chaffinch, followed by the male. Everybody knows the Robin even though most of us only think of it living here over Christmas, on our cards. This is followed by a male Siskin, my favourite little bird, stands up for itself against bigger birds on the feeders, but also such wonderful colours. Lastly for today we have the humble Blackbird, we have an affinity with these be they our winter visitors or our resident birds.

Every morning when we get up, waiting for us on the back doorstep our normally 3 couples of Blackbirds & eventually their young as well, at least a total of 8 sometimes more. The reason being that, even before the kettle goes on, they know they will be fed a handful of sultanas, this goes on several times during the day after their morning feed. In fact if we have the back door open in the summer, one or two now venture in to the low shelf where the sultanas are kept in a container & help themselves. We normally reckon a 84p bag of sultanas will last for 3 days before it is gone, our birds do eat well & I will explain the other feeds we give them when I have that next quiet day.

 

 

When we moved here 11 years ago, the village was full of House Sparrows, half way up the hill there were pairs nesting, but we had none. We both think they are lovely little birds that can be found in every continent around the world, so we wanted our own colony of them. Now we couldn’t just go down to the village & net a load & bring them up here, no, we needed to encourage them. These Sparrows are community birds & live & nest together, so I built them a Sparrow hotel. Just like a Tit box, bigger with three separate apartments in the same box, one with a front facing hole & the other two on the sides (see enclosed photo). It took a couple of years but eventually a reservation was made by one honeymoon couple who duly gave us two babes. Word must have got round that this was an ideal hotel & that accommodation & food cost you nothing as a few more arrived. Now as you can see from the photo I have had to add an annexe to accommodate all our guest.

This year has been a bumper year for babies & it is so good to see them following Mum & Dad around begging for food, I reckon we have at least 12 babes, maybe from 3 separate parents & I still see them taking food up to the hotel, so maybe some more will be about later.

My point is anyone can encourage loads of birds into whatever type of garden you have, just by providing the right environment. So that is your task when you have nothing to do, Sparrow, Tit , Robin, owl or starling boxes all so easy to make.

One complaint about the Sparrows, not content with the hotels I provide, they took over my two artificial House Martin nests last year & the Martins never came back.

My heading is “a normal day”, though with Scotland being the hottest place in the U.K. that for a start does not make it a normal day.

Jan has started her annual task of painting all our sheds & gates with fence paint, beginning with the double gates. Takes her a while, mainly due to the changing weather & the fact that she normally ends up with more paint on herself than on the wood. I am not allowed to touch it, just removing & replacing any wire netting that is in her way, such as the gates on the driveway.

My task today was lifting the ferns that have run rampant throughout the garden, a few are attractive, but when they start growing out of the dry stone wall, they have to come out before it collapses the walls. Hard work, so this afternoon I had a break & went fishing on the village clubs lochan. Hard work in bright sunlight & a stiff breeze, managed one more for the freezer though. I have so many places within the National Park that I can fish as I belong to a total of 4 different clubs. But I can see the one I fished today from my house, but to get to it I have to go round the river so it’s about a mile, but well worth it.

Last night I looked out on the field in front of the house & saw a pair of hares. Grabbed my camera crept out in the field & got within 50 yards & snapped the attached shot.

 

Today in the village hall is our annual village market, local people buy a stall & sell their produce. Rami from The Mill sells his bread, a couple of local photographers sell their amazing local images, one in large framed shots of scenery & Julie sells her animals, landscapes shots on greetings cards

 

Of course there are homemade jams, veg & knitwear, along with jewelry and honey. Overall it is a good example of what can be found in any local community & is well shown off thanks to a dedicated committee of locals who organise it.

As the weather is not that good today (overcast & occasional light shower), then the attendance of locals & holiday makers is high, so hopefully all will make some money to continue their hobbies.

I am a very keen angler & I have been looking forward to today for weeks now. I had been invited to fish a Scottish hill loch by a fairly famous journalist, this loch happens to be full of big Pike. Met up on his estate about 10 o’clock & drove on a very rough track to the loch. Though it was raining & we had to bail a lot of water out of the boat, I was full of optimism. Within 10 minutes of being on the water I had a Pike, a hard fighting 5lb. Eventually got it to the net, not before I had grabbed the wire trace (that stops them biting through the line), the Pike then decided he didn’t like being hauled aboard the boat & made a dash, stripping the wire over my finger causing a fair old cut. Netted it this time with blood dripping of my finger. After releasing it , wrapped up my finger in a hanky & carried on full of hope for the next one, which never came.

The attached photos show the beautiful loch we were fishing. On returning to the house a couple of hours later, my host gave me permission to fish his stocked trout loch for an hour, hence the other photo of the 2 1/2 lb Rainbow Trout. That has gone  in the freezer & will be cold smoked at Christmas, along with all the others I catch this season. The neighbours & friends then get a side of smoked trout as their pressie from me, far better than smoked salmon as well.

We are blessed with a wide range of wildlife in our garden & surrounding fields, mostly I encourage many species of birds, which I will cover when I have gathered enough photos of them. Well I have enough shots, but, would prefer to take them within the week that I post about them, so they will show what is about at the time.

Today I was sitting in my homemade hide that I have constructed out of some camouflage netting one of my sons gave me for Fathers day, when along came one of the 4 Red Squirrels that a frequent visitors to their feeding box & peanut holders that are scattered around the garden.  They normally are fairly used to us & if we approach them they will only leave at the last possible moment hoping we go elsewhere.

The photos above are the ones that I took today, the first is it(not sure of sex) eating a peanut, second, coming out of the feeding box, with a peanut in it’s mouth & lastly all you see as he disappears in for it’s food.

Dave

Wednesday nights is (throughout the year) Table Tennis night in the village hall. We are a dedicated small bunch, in the summer we play just for fun & fitness, with an average of about 8 to 10 turning up. Of course this is holiday time & our numbers do fluctuate, but last night we had a father & son Dutch pair come & join us, who were  good players. When the son arrived with his own bat & a set of balls in a case, we knew he may be fairly good. So 10 of us last night, with drawn pairs playing doubles against each other, the Dutch father & one of the regulars won that & then we had a knockout singles, which yours truly won. Such good fun, with all ages playing & all abilities, none of us getting upset if we win or lose, just a way of keeping fit & being part of the community.

We decided that having holiday makers in was an added bonus ( as well as adding funds to the village hall restoration), so we are going to put a notice up each week advertising that all are welcome, as we can provide enough bats & balls for all & with 3 tables we should get plenty of games in. Above is a photo of some of last nights “competitors”.

In the winter (when it is mainly locals playing T/T things do get a bit more serious with every week being a bit more competitive, with huge prizes every week (well a small bar of chocolate actually), culminating in a finals week with china cups for the winners.

I think that as a village we lay a fair bit on for locals & visitors in the summer. we have an outdoor bowls green, 2 or 3 Family Fun nights ( though last years were all called off because of bad weather), these include archery , slow bike races, tractor rides, a clown , Segway riding & fly casting. Plus the church flower show & sale of work, a marque behind the chippy with live music at weekends & of course the Highland Games at the castle. So we are very active, even if it does normally come down to the “same old faces” providing these events.

What a difference a day makes, yesterday 27C, today 13C with the threat of rain all afternoon, oh well that is Scotland for you.

Jan & I try to stay as fit as 70 year olds can, she does her 10,000 steps daily, I go to the gym twice a week & we walk down to the village every other day or so. Now when I say walk DOWN to the village it is a steep walk down, but so much steeper climbing back up. Of course there has to be some form of incentive to do this 3 mile walk & in the summer it is The Mill. No I am not related or have any financial interest in this wonderful establishment, apart from the owner being a fishing buddy. But if you are travelling in either direction on the A9, do not bother stopping at The Bruar (Harrods of the North), come into Blair & find the Mill.

It is a fully working watermill that grinds it’s own flour, bakes wonderful bread, cakes & the coffee is  good also. Rami the owner (describes himself as “the only Jew in the village”) won the Scottish finals in an ITV bakers challenge contest a few years back & will feature in the present series on BBC 2 with Nadia the Bake off champion.

So we walk down have our treat & walk back up our long hill.  Today was a bonus for on the way up I picked a large number of wild Gooseberries & some wild Strawberries, just to fuel the engine to get up the hill.

Below is a picture of The Mill. Please feel free to make any comments about my blog. Dave