Saturday 28th April 2012

Lost and Found
 Pam's ducks have been getting more adventurous recently and one day she saw them waddling over Mr Scott's field opposite us. Bev from across the road later saw them half way up the hill, and that was the last we saw of them for 5 or 6 days.
 Pam was more upset about the loss of the ducks than if I had gone missing and I had to drive round Burray looking fornthem all to no avail. We even put a notice up in the shop although the lady in the shop did seem to think that it was a bit funny when Pam gave her a notice about 5 runner ducks that had run off.
 The ducks finally returned of their own volition, all seeming very hungry and one of them quite lame. All's well that ends well I suppose.
 It may not have ended yet though, as last night I noticed the ducks were over the road again and this morning I can not see them. We may have a repeat performance.

 I think it may be because they do not like us taking their eggs (if we can find them). Somebody should tell them though that this is part of the bargain. I feed them, they lay eggs and then I eat the eggs. Seems fair to me.

 On a more positive poultry note, one of the geese has hatched 2 eggs and so we now have 5 geese. We will see if they survive as I have been told lots of horror stories about hoodies or Black backs taking goslings, or the goslings just dying at 4 weeks old.
 If I were a hoody or black back then I would definitely not go near the goslings. The 3 adult geese keep the youngsters shepherded so that they are all in a small group with the youngsters in the middle and thye are VERY aggresive.

 On the chicken front, I have just put 7 Andalusian chicks out into the field for the first time since they hatched. It was a nice sunny day so I thought that they would be able to go out without to much of a shock. Then after I had put them out, it started to snow heavily. Oh the beauty of Orkney weather. Just in case we do not have enough chickens, Pam has ordered a dozen Blue Cochin hatching eggs from down south, so when they arrive I may as well fill the incubator with some more Andalusians and some Orpingtons.
 Nobody comes here now and gets away without taking some eggs. I think that Pam managed to give away about 2 dozen today and I got rid of another dozen last night. Surprisingly, we had omlette for tea.

Here endeth the poultry section.

I am still keeping up with the art classes, though I am not a natural artist but I am enjoying it and I think that I am getting a bit better but we will wait and see about that. I have at least managed to progress from copying other people's drawings to being able to do some of my own and have even managed to put colour onto some drawings without totally ruining them, a vast improvement.

 We went for a walk round Orphir, near the Round Kirk, last week and even Pam managed to make it round the 3 miles without any trouble. Part way round, and totally enexpectedly, we came across Orkney's equivalent of a huge forest.
 
Although it was right by the coast, there were several dozen trees and some of them quite tall. Admittedly most of the trees were rather gnarled but you don't get that number of trees in many places in Orkney.
 That part of Orphir must have some sort of benign micro-climate although there does not appear to be much shelter there.
It was all very picture skew and even had a pretty stream running through a shallow valley. In a rather ambitious moment, I thought thatit was so nice that I would try to draw it. If this ever results in a half decent picture then I will be astonished and will put a photo up on the blog.

 I have decided that I am going to see about getting laser surgery on my eyes to save having to wear glasses. This means that I have to go to Aberdeen for assessments/ estimates. I thought that I would go to two different eye surgery places in Aberdeen on the same day for the checks to save on travelling but unfortunately because of the eye drops that they use, it is only possible to have one appointment in any 48 hours so I will have to go down twice.
 I can at least get down and back in a day if I catch the wednesday night ferry down at midnight and then catch the thursday evening ferry back up which will get me into Kirkwall at midnight on thursday. With my islander travel vouchers I can travel down for free and have a cabin so I can get some sleep and on the return journey I get islander discount so it will only cost me £12.55 for each return trip.
 Not bad really for 14 hours cruising. Its a pity that cruises round the greek islands dont come that cheap.
 All the adverts for the laser surgery seem to say "from £350 per eye" or about that but I am willing to bet that when I get the actual estimate, it will be 6 or 7 times that price. I have never heard of anybody getting it for anywhere near £350.
 Maybe I should just have one eye done and then when I wanted to see something properly I could just shut the bad eye. Just like looking through a telescope.

 That's the end for now. You will have to wait and see if the ducks have legged it again or if they return today. I am not putting more notices in the shop though, nor am I driving round the island looking for them.

I couldn't resist this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=pBwEIP2JBMM

The grass is riz

Monday 2nd April 2012
The days are getting longer and from now on we have longer days up here than down south.
The clocks have gone forward or backwards or whatever it is that tey do in spring. This messing around with time has always mystified me. Does just moving the hands on a clock make any difference to time? Is mid-day really mid-day, or if the clocks go back, is mid-day at 11 AM?
I think that the reason for all this messing with clocks is supposed to be something to do with making it lighter in winter when the children finish school. Would it not be simpler to say that schools open one hour earlier in winter, or come to that, say that everything starts one hour earlier and the clocks stay the same.
Stephen Hawkins never mentioned anything about juggling with clocks in "A brief history of time" or at least not in the few pages that I read ( three pages forward and two pages back).
Anyway, enough of that.

What I was trying to say before I went off on one was that spring is on its way or is here already.
The snow lying on the ground outside at the moment does tend to discourage this belief in spring but I have always been an optimist.
The official start of spring does at least mean that people have come out of hibernation like little green shoots and things start to happen.

We have had a couple of glorious hot days, one of them a bit to, too, two hot for me. On one of these days a new local walking group had a ramble from Burray village around Hunda island and back. Although we only live about 800 yards from Hunda I have never been over the causeway to the island so this was a "must do" walk.
They had estimated that the walk would take about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours. I thought that this was rather optimistic and it ended up taking about 4 to 4 1/2 hours including a break of anout 45 minutes.

Looking back at Burray from Hunda.

It was an enjoyable walk but about half an hour after we started I could feel the pressure on my hip joints as we went uphill. I valiantly,(or foolishly)persisted and although I managed the walk with no trouble,I spent the next 3 days limping about with sore joints. (Oh the joys of od age. All the time to do what you want but your body won't let you.)

Previous to this, and while I still had two functioning legs, we ad a "Birdie walk from Marwick bay up to Marwick head, back down to the bay and along to the fishemen's huts at Sand Geo.

Marwick Head and the Kitchener memorial



It was an interesting walk. We saw a dolphin so close that we could reach out and touch it.

OK, so the more perceptive among you will have noticed that it was not a very lively dolphin but a dolphin is a dolphin, or at least an ex-dolphin.
We also saw a whale, or to be more precise, some bits of a dead whale. There are the remains of a long dead whale that have been washed up in Sand Geo for several weeks now, just skin and blubber now but it is still attracting lots of gulls.

It was not all death and gloom though. Such is the circle of life that omong others,the whale carcass has attracted some Iceland gulls. We have recently had an influx of Glaucous and Icelandic gulls and there were several at the whale carcass.
At first thought it may seem that we should get loads of Iceland gulls here as Iceland is not far away. Iceland gulls though do not come from Iceland but from Greenland and Northern Canada so they are a long way from home.

Why are they called Iceland gulls when they do not come from Iceland? Maybe it is just because "Greenland and northern Canada gull" is a bit of a mouthful.

I had some Andalusian eggs in the incubator. Nine of the twelve hatched, two were infertile and one got infected through a nick in the shell. In theory, this should have given me about 50% blue, 25% white and 25% black. The blue ones are the only ones that you are allowed to show so of course of the 9 that I have, 5 are white, 3 are black and 1 is blue. Maybe the next lot will be better.