Natural highs and lows

Stromness is a small town on the west coast of the West Mainland of Orkney. Its known maritime history encompasses Viking seafarers, the 18th Century herring fishing boom and, these days, a fleet of recreational diving boats taking adventurous folk to explore the World War One wrecks beneath Scapa Flow. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Hoy Sound to the south and the sheltered inlet of Hamnavoe to the east, Stromness faces the sea. We live on the other edge, to the north, just where a town of approximately 2500 souls gives way to fields and moorland. This statement must be tempered with the phrase "for now", for even the peaceful haven that is Orkney is as susceptible as anywhere in the UK to rampant house building and the spread of human habitation at the expense of wildness. Indeed, three houses are imminently to be built around us, lessening the liminal feeling of our home as a place connecting urban and rural.  This won't be completely a bad thing, as the new

In case you're wondering, yes, we survived last Sunday's beach clean at Orphir Bay despite the 40+mph winds. Fortunately (although actually unfortunately), there was so much rope on the beach, we were able to weigh down our plastic rubbish bags quite easily. Smaller bits of plastic were trickier to handle in the gusty conditions, for despite plunging the offending piece of litter into a bag, by some sort of venturi effect, it would be whipped back out by the wind. I had to pick up one particularly annoying food wrapper four times 🙄  At a rough guess, 95% of what the group collected was fishing-orientated: rope, string and netting. There was also plenty of parcel strapping and, new for 2024, some discarded coffee pods. The following day saw Megan and I head over to Deerness to carry out some vole monitoring, with the Spring survey for the Orkney Native Wildlife Project. Shortly after beginning the first of our two transects, Megan found a caterpillar of the Ruby Tiger moth clam

During the previous blogpost I covered the mammalian part of the trip to Hoy, so today we will concentrate on other things seen on the walk last weekend. It seems longer ago than that, mind, as the day's warm sunshine has been replaced by more wintry weather. Indeed, later today, we're attempting a beach clean for Bag the Bruck in winds approaching gale force. But I digress. This particular Hoy trip was to be the first from our new home without using a car, for now we can walk down the hill to the harbour in Stromness and catch the foot ferry across to Moaness in Hoy. In a foreshadowing of the wonderful day ahead, as we pottered down Hillside Road, Blu the macaw suddenly shot out in front of us from behind some houses, before being chased homeward by a confused gull. At the pier, we met up with other folk joining the Orkney Field Club walk and boarded the mv Graemsay bound for Hoy. The crossing, in bright sunshine, gave us the chance to watch auks and Gannets who are returning

After eleven winters at 59 degrees North, I decided that it was high time that I made the effort to see one of Orkney's seasonal highlights, Mountain Hares in their white coats. Every year, around February or March, depending upon the weather, the Orkney Field Club organises a trip to the island of Hoy to see these spectacular creatures. I have no excuses. I have been a member of the Field Club almost since arriving on these shores. I have been a committee member of the club for the best part of a decade. I have been the Club Chair and the Club Secretary. Yet I have never been on the Hoy Hare trip. Talk about inept. Yesterday was the day when that particular wrong was righted. "Oh?!" you all say, " is this a post about hares, then?" Could be! The theory goes that once the snow has melted from the hills of Hoy, the Mountain Hares in their white coats will stick out amongst all the brown heather like sore thumbs. To a certain extent, this is true. But the hares ar

Let's begin with a couple of apologies: 1. We're not done with hare posts just yet. I'm sorry. Buckle up; 2. I have been quite restrained with my punning of late (no, really), but I don't think I can hold back the groundswell of awful puns for much longer. I am so sorry. As we reach the end of March, the stubble field behind our house is pretty much on borrowed time. In an area where about half the island's income comes from agriculture, that land is going to be ploughed, rolled and sowed some time soon. So with a sense of contemplative resignation, we have been enjoying the Brown Hares and their antics, because come the plough, they will be harder to spot, even if they take the tramlines. Once the field is rolled and sown, I doubt the hares will have anywhere to hide, although they do have form in this regard. Then it will be a case of waiting for the new green growth of the crop to once more tempt the hares back, providing them with both food and cover. Over the w

Late one recent afternoon, in a change to the advertised programme, this Brown Hare appeared in a field in front of the house. Consequently, I was able to nip out of the back door, scoot around the rear of the property, use our parked cars as cover to approach a bit closer and, happily, not have a window between the camera and the subject. We have had a few lovely days of weather this past week, quite Spring-like, with enough warmth to encourage us to begin work on a pond in the front garden. As is the way with these things, there was much standing around discussing options, measuring, hammering in pegs, further discussion, more measuring, moving of pegs, a bit more measuring and some tweaks of peg locations. Part of the problem is that the site isn't flat, and also our ideal location for the pond is where all the services enter and exit the property. Eventually we hit upon a solution which satisfied us both (and I guess Scottish Water, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks a