Well dear reader, I have been chastised for not having written in the blog for a while.
This is largely because nothing has happened.
When I say that nothing has happened, what I really mean is that nothing interesting, unusual or noteworthy has happened to me. I have continued to eat my meals, go to bed and get up again etc but not much else. No doubt things have happened to others, floods in Australia, murders in America and much much more. Although these things are undoubtedly important, they have had no effect on the small and rather insular world in which I live.
For the sake of at least having something to write, I will relate a couple of things that I have done but you have been warned, it is not riveting or fascinating.
Last week I heard that there was a suspicion of there being two Lesser Scaup on Orkney. I referred to the original Lesser Scaup some weeks ago but for those of you who were not paying attention, a Lesser scaup is a bird. It is a duck and rather unsurprisingly, it is similar to a standard or normal Scaup. Any further information is :-
a) Beyond me.
b) Boring
Anyway, back to the plot (Flimsy though it is). Several people thought that they had spotted another on Echna Loch in Burray. As this is almost on my doorstep, I thought that I may as well wander down. (As I said it has been an unevetful week and anything was better than nothing to do). I duly wandered down to Echna Loch and whenI arrived I found Barry, the Burray birdman, and 2 others with high powered expensive looking spotting scopes set up and scouring all the birds on the loch.
All the birds were over the far side of the loch and Barry's attempt to get them to move closer by sending someone round to the road on the far side of the loch just resulted in the birds moving about 2 yards nearer. I could see nothing with my binoculars so after a bit I left them to their quest. I later found that they had got all excited because they thought that they had found the elusive bird but on examination of the photos by the experts, it turned out to be some sort of hybrid Tufted Duck or something.
Pam and I have been thinking of getting some chickens. It is nice to have some livestock but large animals are hard work and they all seem to involve loads of government paperwork.
We used to enjoy showing sheep and cattle and so we thought that if we were getting some chickens for meat and eggs, then it would be nice to have some that we could take to local shows aswell for a bit of fun.
It does not cost very much more to get good, show quality stock than ordinary point of lay hens.
Pam decided that she would like Light Sussex as they are a good looking dual purpose breed and she would also like Black Orpingtons because she likes the look of them and they are a good big meaty bird.
I decided that I would get some Silver Grey Dorkings. Needless to say Pam dropped dead lucky and I can not find good Dorkings anywhere within several hundred miles.
I phoned up a man from Tankerness who regularly wins at local shows with all sorts of poultry. He told me of a lady from Finstown who has Light Sussex and regularly wins at national shows. Unfortunately he did not have her phone No or address but with a little searching on the internet I managed to find an address.
There is a problem with addresses in Orkney. Many houses just have a name and if you are lucky maybe a the road has a name. (We have no room to complain as our address is just the name of the house and the name of the island) . Anyway we toddled off to Finstown and with the help of a passing local we managed to find the house with not much trouble.
The lady, Olive Robertson", was in her polytunnel with her chickens when I got there. The birds were certainly lovely ones but she said that she does not normally sell stock to people from Orkney. Maybe this is to reduce competition and make it easier to win at local shows. We were lucky however and she decided that she would sell us some and at a very reasonable price aswell. It was probably due to my charm and devastating good looks that she decided to sell some to us but then it may be that she has decided that it would be nice to have a bit of competition at local shows.
So Pam is happy, she can pick up some sussex from Olive in May. She still has to get some Black Orpingtons but there are some good breeders around Staffordshire so we will pick some up when we are down at easter. She has also arranged to pick up another unrelated Light Sussex cockerel when we are down south.
There seems to be a world shortage of Silver Grey Dorkings so I will have to keep on looking but I think they are a great looking chicken so it is worth persevering.
I have put up a photo of a silver grey dorking just to prove that they do (or at least did) exist and so that you dear reader will appreciate why I think that it may be worth a bit of effort to try and get some.
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