A Couple of Short Walks.

The island

Reeds, Loch Clunie

Horse Chestnut Candle

A wander by a familiar haunt,  Loch Clunie.  Hoped to see an osprey - didn't. It was sunny-ish, but very very cold for May, and I was tired, so I didn't linger.
I did see a Great Crested Grebe, and a swan...
Next day I walked by Loch of the Lowes; in the fields were several pairs of lapwings (more than I've see in years), and numerous brown hares,  with swifts, martins and swallows flying across.  I also observed a little grebe in another loch, and quite a few tufted ducks.
Still no ospreys.
But it's only a matter of time.

By Loch of the Lowes

Loch of the Lowes

Today's Walk - Clunie

Beavers have had a go at the saplings by the water

A dank and silent pool, that always reminds me of the one at the entrance to Moria, in Lord of the Rings

Finally it feels like Spring is, well, not quite here, but definitely On Its Way.  The snowdrops are over and suddenly daffodils are everywhere.  I went over to my regular haunt - Loch Clunie - with my binoculars, hoping to see an osprey. The male has returned to Loch of the Lowes which is just a few miles further along the road, and you just never know.  I was also keeping an eye out for kites, which I'm seeing more frequently these days.

Not today though.  I did see a number of buzzards, three whooper swans, two mute swans, and some long-tailed tits, and that was about it except for the usual pheasants, crows, and mallard ducks.  And a solitary lapwing flying over the road - I think there might have been another sitting in a field, in fact I'm fairly sure of it, and I hope they are a pair and will nest.

I had a look for frog spawn -  again, nothing.  It is a bit early for it here.

It's still bitterly cold when the sun goes in and the wind blows, but at least the days are longer and there is some warmth around.  

I feel that my brain is still in winter-mode.  Not just my brain - my whole system.

Perhaps I need a de-tox or something.

Or perhaps I should just wait, and see how I feel as the year unfolds...

Today's Walk - inside my Own Head

I haven't been outside for a couple of days, except to post a letter, as I've been feeling very ill with a fluey cold.  After one day's respite the weather has continued to be awful again anyway - chilly, steady rain, low skies, interspersed with bouts of 'wind'.  (Which reminds me - I need to summon up the strenf to rescue Tuppence from the ersatz sweat lodge sometime soon.)
Everything is muddy and wintry and Somme-like, still.  Few signs of Spring - certainly nothing much to indicate that the world is coming alive again.
I've been feeling so feeble I've barely read a thing.  However, I did finish one of my last charity shop buys - 'Hello',  Leslie Phillips' autobiography, which I expected to find interesting. I always enjoy his films. However, the book doesn't go into nearly enough detail for my liking.  About anything, really. Which is quite infuriating.  I shouldn't complain though.  I suppose he's had such a long career he would have needed to write several volumes in order to do it all justice, and I'm sure he probably couldn't be bothered.  I get the feeling too that he's probably held back a lot in order to preserve other people's secrets and dignity - and possibly his own.  There is a recent documentary about him on Youtube, I think, if you care to seek it out.
I still haven't finished my second charity shop buy - James Shapiro's '1599 - A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare'.  I tend to read last thing at night, generally, and two or three lines of '1599' and I'm off to sleep.    It's tremendously well-researched (edifying springs to mind) but not sufficiently gripping to keep me awake at 1 a.m..
Which is all to the good as far as I'm concerned.
I listened to a programme about dark matter on Radio Four this morning.  I think it was In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg.  Apparently (and think I sort of knew this before I heard the programme) dark matter is what holds the universe together, only nobody knows what it is.  They aren't even sure what it isn't.  They only know that it's there because it affects other things.  I got quite excited, listening, because that makes complete sense to me.  Or at least it gives me the feeling that it would, if only I sat down and thought about it for a while.  It could even explain human nature and the concept of Good and Evil.  It's the concept of Shadow writ large. And it's not an abstract concept - it really does seem to be that way, in the nature of the energies of which we are a part.   There is some kind of interactive dynamic, between dark and light,  and the one, so it would appear, I think, really cannot exist without the other.  Besides the obvious analogies there's a whole philosophical treatise to be written about that - to add to the hundreds if not thousands already in progress.  Nobody can have completed one because nobody yet knows what the subject really is.
I find it tremendously exciting to learn more about the Universe as I hurtle grave-wards. Perhaps I am going to return to the place 'from whence I came', i.e. Somewhere Out There, and will be recycled as a dark matter 'atom' (not that anyone knows if there are such things in dark matter).  Or perhaps I'll be a bubble in the Soup Dragon's cauldron.
I must read more about it.

Today's Walk - Clunie

Loch Clunie - again.  A very dreich day, and I was tired, so didn't walk round it as I usually do.  I admired the masses of snowdrops, which will be followed by an even better display of bluebells as Spring progresses.  Unfortunately my present camera is very basic and can't do them justice.
Good views of Castle Hill (flat-topped mound on the far side) and of the island, with the Bishop of Dunkeld's house.  Obviously it doesn't belong to the Bishop of Dunkeld any more - and hasn't for a couple of hundred years, as I remember.  It's a shell now.  What a shame.  It must have been a great place to hole up in on a wild and stormy night...the only access by boat...looking out at the churning black waters of the loch from an upper window, while sipping a glass of best brandy and gnawing a peacock's leg (or your own, if supplies were low), and driftwood smouldered in the stone fireplace...
The house did actually burn down in the 1950s, but I'm unsure why.  Possibly smouldering driftwood.
Wildlife spotted today included a herd of about a dozen roe deer in a field (unusual to see such a large group in the open), flocks of geese (greylags I think...) and cormorants on the trees on the island.  Mallards and tufted ducks on the loch.  Various small birds such as blackies, robins, coal tits and wrens active in the surrounding woods.

Today's Walk - Loch Clunie (again)

Loch frozen over (all but), geese huddled on the far side, buzzards keening to each other in the freezing cold.  Lots and lots of snowdrops.
Blue sky reflected in the ice.  The air was very still.  We threw stones onto the ice and there was a ringing echo.
I go here a lot and I've described this place before, so I won't go into it all again.  Click on the links below if you'd like to know more.