Another day, another island.

Thursday 2nd June 2011
Another lovely day here (It always sunshines in Orkney) and I was booked in for a trip to Egilsay with the RSPB. I had been spoiled for choice really as the U3A birdie group are also going on a trip today. They are going to Sanday but I thought that I would opt for the Egilsay trip. The bird reserve on Egilsay is supposed to be very good and there are not many trips there. Sanday on the other hand has a very good and active ranger service so I can go for a guided wander round there on some other occassion.

Egilsay is a small island of about 2.5 square miles and is home to 30 people. Egilsay along with Wyre, another small island and Rousay a larger island always seem to be treated as one unit, possibly because they have a separate ferry from Tingwall that serves the three islands whereas all the other northern isles are served from Kirkwall.

Egilsay's main claim to fame is that it is the Island where St Magnus was killed in 1115 AD by Lilolf, the cook of Magnus's cousin Hakon when Hakon's troops refused to do the evil deed. There is of course, a monument on the spot where the murder took place and there is also one of the few remaining round towered viking churches in Scotland.
About 1/3 of Egilsay belongs to the RSPB and is valued for rich meadows which are grazed by a local farmer and its wetlands.

Because of the requirements of the locals the ferry does not go straight from Tingwall to Egilsay. We therefore set off from Tingwall and went to Rousay where a tractor with a trailer full of gravel boarded. Then on to Wyre where the tractor went off. We waited a bit and then the tractor came back and we returned to Rousay. Finally we went from Rousay to Egilsay. It is a pretty, gentle island but although the bird reserve has a good reputation, I think that we must have hit it on a bad day. There was not much in the way of bird life about at all. Plenty of gulls and terns but then there are gulls and terns everywhere anyway.
We did see a peacock which is the first time that I have seen one in Orkney. I am not sure however if this counts as a rare bird sighting.

It was a pleasant day out though which is the main reason that I go on these trips and we did see a few arctic tern nests although I think that calling them nests is over-stating things a bit. They are just eggs laid on the shingle.

On the way back we had time to stop at St Magnus church for a look round and had our butties in the shelter of the churchyard wall.


One of the girls on the trip who comes from Rousay said that although the church belongs to Historic Scotland and has no roof, it is still used occassionally. (They don't believe in wasting anything up here and if they already have a church, albeit without a roof, then why not use it. After all churches are expensive and so you have to keep using them for 1000 years or more to make it worthwhile building them.)

Friday was another lovely day and so of course I spent some time building chicken houses.
The new "all singing- all dancing egg incubator arrived so I transferred some of the eggs from the old incubator into it.(We have been having some problems with the old one.) In theory I should just have to put the eggs into this new one, set the controls and then not even look at it or open it until I take the chicks out 21 days later. We shall see.
Just as a reward for all my efforts on the chicken front, we decided to go to The Sands for an evening meal and a few pints. The perfect end to another good day.

Easy come, easy go.

Sunday 29th May 2011
Some good news yesterday. John Bowker, my oldest friend, is going to be coming up here in a couple of months with Alex, his son. We have spoken to John a few times but it was not until we contacted Alex that anything actually got sorted out. Ever since I have known him (when I was just out of my pram)John has been late for anything. We even used to have trouble getting him to the pub on time as youngsters. He is a fine example of being laid back almost to the point of paralysis. Still, now that Alex is in charge then John will no doubt be forced into movement. It will be good to see him and I am sure he will love it here. He has been once before with me when we were kids, many moons ago.

Dennis came up with the four goslings today. He still approves of us so we are honoured to be allowed to have them. He checked that the grass was OK and that their little shelter was sufficient and then he managed to tear himself away and leave them with us. Shortly after this the goslings managed to find a hole in the fence and went into the bottom field. I got them back but on Monday morning they had all gone missing and I found them 2 fields away legging it off to who knows where. I decided that I would put them in one of the chicken pens so i made a small temporary shelter and locked them in a pen. These pens are a reasonable size, about 20 foot square and that stopped their wanderings.
I took some fertile Orpington eggs down to Dennis as he likes our Orpingtons and wants to incubate some. While I was there I mentioned that the goslings had wandered off and that I had penned them up for a while. On Tuesday Dennis came up and said that if it was OK with us he would take the goslings back and keep them until they were to big to get through the holes in the netting and then fetch them back to us. He does not like them being penned. At least it will save us a months worth of feed.

So we ended up having the geese for almost 2 days but it costs us no more to wait another month. We only paid £5 each for the goslings and at this rate they will be full grown by the time we get them so I can't complain about the price.

On Tuesday evening I had to take Molly to her dog training class. This one however was outside in a field full of dog agility equipment. The problem was that the field was not fenced and there were tractors and trailers whizzing up and down the edge of the field with silage. These tractors were driven by young lads trying to do handbrake turns at the right angled corner at the bottom. The field was about 100 yards from a main road (OK so it was an Orkney main road and there were only about 6 cars passed in the 90 minutes that we were there but it was a main road.)
True to form, Molly legged it off but at least she only went round the field having a sniff at all the other dogs. There were about 20 dogs, many of which she had not seen before so she thought it was great. She did eventually come back when she thought that she had introduced herself to all the others but I think that she has a fair bit more to learn about coming back before she gets onto the jumping through hoops, weaving, see-saws and tunnels. Admittedly she took to all the agility stuff like a duck to water and really enjoyed it but I think that until she learns to stop and come back when told then we will give the agility a miss. We are therefore going to try a different trainer with different methods. You never know, it may work but I will not hold my breath.

On Wednesday Pam and I were going to go on an RSPB boat trip round Deerness and into "The Gloup" but unfortunately it was postponed as the weather was not brilliant and they need it to be really calm to get into The Gloup and close up to the breeding sites on the cliffs. It has been re-organised for Saturday so we will just have to hope for good weather then.

It's Folk Festival time again.

Thursday 26th May 2011
For the next four days it is the Orkney Folk Festival so I am looking forward to a good time and you are no doubt going to have to suffer more videos of The Chair and such like.
Having said that, the first concert that we went to on Thursday evening was a bit of a disappointment. The concert was in the Cromarty Hall in "The Hope" and it was not the best I have ever been to. I only decided to go to it because it was local and you need to support local things. Of the four acts on, three were not really the style that I like. One band, "The Southern Tenant Folk Union", were good though so it was not a total loss. One of the members of the band was from Wilmslow. Small world.

Friday was a much better day. My sister in law, Ann, had been to a concert last week and had seen a group called "The Poozies" who she said how very good and that they were coming up here for the festival. We duly decided to go and listen to them at a lunchtime concert in The Reel. We got there about half an hour before the doors opened to make sure that we could get in as The reel is not very big. Even so there was already a reasonable queue.

We managed to get seats though and fortunately the weather was pleasantwhile we were queueing. They ended up opening the windows so that those who could not get in could sit at the outside tables and listen.
Ann was correct, The Poozies were very good, really lively and with a style of their own. I am normally a bit wary of all girl groups but these girls could not easily have been improved on.
Friday evening was "Song Club" in The Royal Hotel Stromness. There are several different song clubs run during the festival and they are like old style folk clubs so part of the attraction may be nostalgia. It was a good night with local and visiting singers and people from the floor doing a turn. Probably not the best music at the festival but a good, enjoyable evvening with plenty of sing-alongs. We finally got back home at 2:00 AM, not a decent time for old Knackered people.

One of the problems with the folk festival is that there must be close to 50 different concerts and other gigs on in the four days and so it is impossible to see all the bands, and groups that I wanted to see.

Not surprisingly,we over slept on Saturday morning so I missed the Open Stage which is where all the local bands can have a go and the winner is given a slot at next years festival. The winners of an Orkney folk competition are also in line for greater things. Last years winners, "Broken Strings", went on to win the best newcomers at the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow where Orkney just about wiped the board in the other categories as well.

Saturday evening though was the night that I had been looking forward to.
The Intertunity (Maybe not the best name) between The Chair and Fullceilidh Spekemannslag, their Shetland equivalent. It was billed as a music competition with Fair Isle as the prize. To be decided by the volume of applause, whistling and shouting from the audience.
This clip is not a very good one but it gives some impression of the atmosphere.

Not just tremendous music but Cossack dancing and even a few press ups from Douglas Montgomery who is not built for press ups. A dancing Shetlander in the audience draped in a shetland flag and little else. A little bit of cheating by the Chair for Orkney by fetching on at various points several other well known Orkney musicians ranging from 20 to 80 years old.
Sadly though, in the end Shetland won although they were helped by all the members of The Chair and the other Orcadians on the stage cheering very loudly through amplifiers for the shetlanders.

The Goose Inspector cometh

Monday 20th May 2011
The plant nursery at Birsay is closing and has a sale on today and tomorrow. The lady has sold the house and is moving in with a friend until she finds another house for herself. Pam and Claire decided that we should shoot up there because there were bound to be loads of bargains.
The Birsay nursery must be one of the most exposed nurseries in the UK. It sits at the top of a hill looking down on the extreme northern tip of mainland Orkney. I don't think that there is anything except ocean between Birsay and Canada.
At least if you buy a plant from there then you know that it will survive anywhere.

I wasn't thinking properly when we went to the nursery and so I took the little car. Pam and Claire bought not only a few plants but also loads of plantpots and other assorted containers. Of course it was "muggins" that had to somehow get all their purchases fitted into a car that was not designed to carry loads of freight. Being a master of packing, I just managed to get everything and everybody in. We now have enough plantpots to last the remainder of our lives and then some.

I am buying some goslings from a neighbour a few fields away. He is in love with his geese and so i had to have an inspection to see if he thought that we were good enough to have any of his geese. I have already built a shelter for them to use if the weather is bad and that was approved. The field is fenced so I was confident that we would pass.
This turned out to be over-confidence. When Dennis came round, all was OK except that apparently geese like tender new shoots of grass so he thought it would be a good idea to mow tha field to encourage new growth for them. I promised to top the field and dennis went away happy.

I duly topped the field a couple of days later and I will probaly have to do it again as I could not cut to low without leaving a swath that would lie on the field.

The broody hen has managed to hatch three Orpingtonchicks from the five eggs that I had put under her. I had to take the chicks off her and put them under a heat light. If I had left the chicks with her then they would have been taken by one of the multitude of avian predators that are constantly on the look-out for unprotected hatchlings, especially at this time of year.
It sometimes surprises me that any of the seabirds around here manage to raise any young. I suppose they manage by sheer weight of numbers, there being to many chicks for the predators to possibly eat them all.
I will have to build a run with a roof on it to keep chicks in but not at the moment as it is to windy.

I collected the sit-on mower from the lad in Finstown. He charged a total of £50 and that included new parts, so he is a lot cheaper than anywhere else. I have added him to my "Must not forget" list.

Another icelandic volcano has threatened to cause chaos to air travel as happened last year. Kirkwall and some of the other northern airports were shut but only for one day. I noticed on the news that the boss of Ryan Air was saying that there was no volcanic ash over Scotland. This made me wonder why my cars, along with all the other cars in Orkney were covered in a good thickness of ash on Tuesday morning. Maybe it was the ash fairy.
Apparently Ryan Air had sent an aircraft up to take air samples and they claimed that they had found no ash at all. Maybe they were right then.
Unfortunately for Ryan Air, their sampling flight had been tracked on radar and it did not go anywhere near where the ash cloud was supposed to be so maybe it was not the "ash fairy".

Molly's dog training on tuesday evening went well and everybody was very impressed at how much she had improved. Unfortunately this improvement was from a very low base a couple of weeks ago

Orknet's true loyalties revealed.

Monday 16th May 2011
Just for a change I spent Monday making chicken hutches. At this rate I will have to stop soon or we will run out of space to put them.

Tuesday was Norwegian Constitution Day so of course the centre of Kirkwall was closed. There was a parade from the harbour to the cathedral led by the Kirkwall pipe band and including council officials, visiting norwegian dignitaries and hoards of flag waving children. Then speeches on the green and a service in the cathedral followed by a big party and knees-up in the evening.
There is none of this for St Andrew's day which passes almost unnoticed.
We even have a Norwegian consulate in Kirkwall although what they do is a mystery to me but there is a big Orkney, Noway friendship Association so maybe they organise that.

I think that they are probably organising a plot to return Orkney and Shetland to the scandinavian fold where many people would prefer it to be.

There was also one of the first cruise ships of the season in on Tuesday so Kirkwall was very crowded. There were a lot of scandinavian sounding voices around the town so maybe the cruise ship was linked to the constitution day celebrations.

Tuesday evening was as usual Molly's training class. She behaved reasonably well for a change so my new method of being more strict with her may be working. Molly is not sure that this is a good thing though.

On wednesday we were supposed to be going on a trip to Hoy but it was called off because the weather was supposed to be going to be bad.
As it turned out, the weather turned a bit breezy but nothing really bad. Just to make matters worse, there were killer whales in Echna bay on the other side of Burray and in Scapa Flow. If we had gone to Hoy then we would have been going over the flow at the time that the killer whales were there. Ah well, another time maybe.
At least it was to windy to make chicken houses.

We have a blackbirds nest in a bush in the garden and they have young still in the nest. This morning a hooded crow was in the bush trying to get the chicks but the parents gave it a real telling off and it gave up. It is surprising how such small birds can become so fierce that even the crow reckons that it is not worth the risk of injury just for a quick meal. After the crow had gone, molly went into the base of the bush to see what all the fuss had been about. She came out rather rapidly persued by two very angry and adrenalin fuelled, hyped up blackbirds.

There was another rather surprising old fogey's do on Thursday. The U3A had a meeting in Holm with a local man giving a talk on wartime Holm. Pam was a bit worried that we might not get much of an attendance but as it turned out ther room was packed and we had to fetch in another dozen or so chairs.
The talk was good and he was a natural story-teller. He explained several of the things around Holm that we had all seen but never really noticed or realised what they were. He had been a young lad in the war and he communicated the excitement that must have been felt in such a small community by all the naval activity in Scapa Flow and the building of the Churchill Barriers across to Burray and South Ronaldsay.
Just to make Pam's day, she managed to get three new members signed up fot the U3A.

Being very old can be good fun.

Saturday 14th May 2011
An overcast and rainy day and a day that I had been dreading for some time.
We had been invited by the Burray SWRI (womens institute, called "The Rural" up here) to attend their annual over 60s dinner in the village hall.
I had visions of being the only man in a room full of doddering old white haired ladies talking about their varicose veins. however, you can not ignore an invite from the rural or you and your descendants for several generationswill be ostracised. e therefore had to go along. Jimmy, the local vicar had told me that he was going but he cried off at the last minute as he had to bury somebody (I was getting close to that myself)so I was not sure if there were going to be any men.

I need not have worried. There were more men on our table than women. There was good intelligent conversation and everyone was very welcoming. I never heard a single reference to varicose veins and the food was good.

There was entertainment laid on and I had heard that this was going to be an accordianist. Now I quite like accordians as part of a band but was expecting a single accordianist playing "come into the garden Maud" and the like. It did not turn out quite like that. My suspicions were raised when I saw Douglas Montgomery sitting in the corner. Douglas is a superb fiddle player, music teacher and member of several very good bands.

What we in fact ended up with was half of a band called "The Chair".
As you dear readers will know, The Chair is one of my favourite groups. They remind me very much of Fairport Convention on a good day.

The Chair at Last years Orkney Folk Festival

It's not long now until this years folk festival so no doubt you will be hearing more of The Chair.

Needless to say the the owld codgers meal was a great afternoon. The village hall comittee may need to do some repairs to the floor of the hall after all the foot stamping but as they say, a good time was had by all.
Just to ingratiate ourselves with the SWRI, I stayed behind and moved all the tables and chairs away for them. I was a bit surprised that all the other guests just left without helping but Hey Ho.

Back to normal weather then.

Sunday 8th May 2011
Well now that my sisters have gone back south the weather has decided that it has had enough of being sunny and calm all the time. It started off windy and wet on Sunday and didn't improve much for most of the week.

Because of the weather, (or rather because I am getting soft in my old age and no longer go out in foul weather), I just pottered about doing things in the house or in the shed for most of the week.
Many attempts to ensure that the Jersey Giant cockerel stayed in his pen were all to no avail and I have more or less given up trying and now I just put him back every now and again. He has at least stopped attacking the Sussex cock (having established his dominance) so it does not really matter.
I have now bought a landing net so at least I can catch the evil cockerel when I want to.

On Tuesday I had some timber delivered so of course I was quizzed by the dlivery driver about how I had voted in the Scottish election. He is a really chatty bloke and always asks what I think of scottish politics. I don't think that I have offended him to much.

I managed to break the lawnmower, a cunning ploy to avoid mowing the lawn. This turned out to be quite lucky and not only because it delayed having to cut the grass.
While I was trying to find out who in Orkney did lawn mower eepairs, I cam across a young lad in Finstown who repairs all sorts of small engines.
I get the impression that he didn't do to well at school but he is a natural with machinery. He seems to be able to fix anything and he charges a fraction of the price that the more usual repair shops charge.
Anyway he fixed the mower quickly and cheaply so he can give the strimmer a look at next.

We finally had a decent day on friday, nice, sunny and calm so I thought it was much to nice to work. The RSPB have wardens on duty at some of the hides throughout the summer and today there was one at The Loons so I thought I would go and get myself educated.
The Loons hide is fairly idylic, overlooking a small lake (lochan) and a load of marshy wetland and reed beds, so it is pleasant just sitting there admiring the view even if there are no birds. There were however plenty of birds and I can now recognise a sedge warbler at 100 yards (but probably not at 6 feet).